Book Reviews
doi:10.1111/j.1753-6405.2007.00096.x
Designing and Conducting
Mixed Methods Research
By John W. Creswell and Vicki L. Piano Clark. Published by
Sage Publications, California, 2007. Paperback, 273 pages.
$66. ISBN 1 4129 2792 7.
Reviewed by Priscilla Robinson
School of Public Health, La Trobe University, Victoria
A story. In the beginning, there was Quantitative Research. A
few years later, there was Qualitative Research. And then Mixed
Methods was born, as a separate child of these parents. Let’s all
welcome Mixed Methods. As it happens, I am very committed
to the idea of mixed methods research, dislike the idea of any
kind of hierarchy of methods (as opposed to an hierarchy of
evidence), and firmly believe that all public health researchers
should be conversant with the basic methodologies and methods
of both schools as well as a number of others, including systematic
reviews, evaluation, documentary research and so on. Each of
these has its own usually complex set of methods and practices. A
book addressing mixed methods, therefore, should be a welcome
addition to the teaching library.
Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research is organised
into 10 chapters that are intended to be logically sequenced, from a
set introducing mixed methods as a research style, through design,
data analysis and writing up to questions and future directions for
mixed methods. However, the chapter titles do not necessarily
reflect the contents, and some important foundations of research
theory are missing. For example, ontology and epistemology are
included but scantily dealt with, and while specific qualitative
methods do receive some description, quantitative methods seem to
be thought of as a homogenous bolus. Many useful data collection
techniques, such as Delphi and Most Significant Change, are also
missing in action.
The book includes several frameworks and tables, some useful
and some very strange and impenetrable. The book contains
many unreferenced inconsistencies and truisms, so that it is
somewhat idiosyncratic to read. For example, chapter 1 is about
understanding mixed methods, and begins: “Work on this book
began almost a decade ago when we started writing about mixed
methods research at the time that qualitative research had achieved
legitimacy and writers were advocating for its use in the social and
human sciences”. Sorry? Date check, this is published in 2007. Do
the authors truly think that it was 1997 before qualitative research
gained academic legitimacy?
The authors introduce us to four types of mixed methods designs:
embedded, exploratory, triangulated, and explanatory, with some
detail about each of the procedures and designs for each. However,
the book has some big gaps in basic research techniques. For
example, looking up the word ‘sample size’ in the index leads to
the sample size question. Answer? The sample size for qualitative
arm of the study (preferably purposefully selected) will be smaller
than for the quantitative (preferably randomly selected) arm. And
388 AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH 2007 vol. 31 no. 4
© 2007 The Authors. Journal Compilation © 2007 Public Health Association of Australia
if you increase the number in the qualitative arm to match the
quantitative arm you will lose detail, and according to the authors
this effect is inevitable. But why?
Another example: running quantitative and qualitative arms
concurrently with the same participants has the potential to bias
data, but again I cannot understand the logic of the argument
against this practice; indeed, in most quantitative study there is at
least one of those responses that invites some sort of thoughtful
comment, which I have always assumed to be a perfectly internally
valid reflection of the writer’s thoughts. Analysis? Well, you need
to know how to do it appropriately! Well I never!
The book is generally poorly referenced and some excellent
examples of mixed methods research are notable for their absence.
On the other hand, the authors reference their own work extensively
(overall about one-tenth of the 10 pages of references), giving
the book something of a house-of-cards feel; disagree with an
argument and the whole section collapses. Roughly half of the
index also consists of the names of writers to whose work the
authors refer (who are largely American, so there are notable
gaps in it).
After much trying, I cannot see how mixed methods as an
independent research design differs from the many research
projects that have designed into them from the beginning both
qualitative and quantitative arms. In short, despite the inference
in the title, a student could not use this book as a stand-alone
manual, and while it contains some useful ideas it would not be a
particularly useful public health research methods course book.
doi:10.1111/j.1753-6405.2007.00097.x
Health Promotion – Principles and
practice in the Australian context
By Mary Louise Fleming and Elizabeth Parker. Published by
Allen & Unwin, Sydney, January 2007. Paperback, 386 pages
with index. RRP $55. ISBN 1 74175 017 2.
Reviewed by Chris Rissel
School of Public Health, University of Sydney,
New South Wales.
This third edition of Health Promotion – Principles and practice
in the Australian context is an excellent text that comprehensively
describes where Australian health promotion professional practice
is up to in the early part of the 21st century.
This edition is not fundamentally different from the earlier
editions, in that they all follow the same structure. However, each
new edition is more sophisticated than the last, reflecting the
growth and development in health promotion. Each edition is an
increment on the previous one with updated examples.
In each edition there is a section on historical developments
in health promotion, national strategies for health promotion,
program planning, program management, and then chapters
on specific settings in which health promotion activity can be