2/6/23, 2:47 AM (2) What is the best way of sampling in an explanatory sequential mixed methods research study?

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Tichaona Mapolisa
Zimbabwe Open University
What is the best way of sampling in an explanatory sequential mixed methods research
study?
Question
Asked April 16, 2018
An illustration of how best to sample respondents and participants in an explanatory sequential
mixed methods research design would educate upcoming and established researchers in a very
big way.
Answer this question
Mixed Methods Research Design

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Popular Answers (2)

David L Morgan added an answer April 16, 2018
Qualitative sampling is purposive in nature, so that the participants you select can serve a distinct
"purpose." In the case of an explanatory sequential design, your purpose is to improve your
understanding of the quantitative results, so you should design a sample that meets this goal. For
example, you might select outliers from a regression analysis (or simple scatter plot). Or you
might decide that you need to learn more about the differences between people who score
either high or low on some key variable. The key point is that the results of your quantitative
research should define the purposes that define your qualitative sample.
As Kien Trung Nguyen points out, you can do this either by recontacting appropriate members of
your original quantitative sample, or by drawing a new sample that meets your purposive criteria.
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David L Morgan added an answer January 12, 2020
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2/6/23, 2:47 AM (2) What is the best way of sampling in an explanatory sequential mixed methods research study? | ResearchGate

The goal of the qualitative portion of this design is to maximize its explanatory power. That is
why, as I explained earlier, the best choice is purposive sampling.
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All Answers (19)

Kien Nguyen-Trung added an answer April 16, 2018
Hi Tichaona,
A mixed-methods sequential explanatory design starts with a quantitative study phase
then follows up with a qualitative study phase. The purpose is to use quantitative
methods to test/prove some hypotheses in your theoretical framework, then utilise
qualitative methods to dig deeper into the field in order to provide explanations to
quantitative results that are ambiguous because of the limits of quantitative data.
With this logic, there should be at least two ways of design sampling strategies.
A) Qualitative sample chosen from quantitative sample.
Step 1: Design your quantitative sample. This sample is of course randomly selected so
as to best explain your research hypotheses. How to sample depends on a lot of
factors to which you must figure out such as what kind of population, budget, human
resources, time, etc.
Step 2: Design your qualitative sample based on the sampling frame of your quantitative
sample. It means that you choose some individuals/households/companies (or
whichever unit analysis) from the sample frame to conduct qualitative exploration.
These chosen must provide extra information that help clear up the ambiguity arising
from your quantitative analysis.
The advantage of this sampling strategy is that you can combine the qualitative
information of those newly interviewed individuals (e.g., bibliographies, stories,
motivations, attitudes, experience with unemployment, etc.) to the quantitative data
(e.g. socio-demographics from questionnaire such as age, jobs, etc.). For instance, you
found out that there a handful of people who are unemployed but have a very high
annual income. You qualitatively interview them and see that they have been received
remittances from their family members just in recent years, which make their income high
- but this kind of information was not covered in your questionnaire.
B) New qualitative sample with a focus on theoretical model's explanation
Step 1 is the same as the A strategy's. But Step 2 you must choose a new qualitative
sample different from the quantitative sample. This qualitative sampling is based on the
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2/6/23, 2:47 AM (2) What is the best way of sampling in an explanatory sequential mixed methods research study? | ResearchGate

demand from your quantitative explanation. With quantitative data, you are trying to fill
up a theoretical model but there are some information is missing. You outline this gap
and try to use qualitative sampling to fix it.
For instance, you surveyed farmers' households in a value change analysis of rice
production. Quantitative data show that the rice production has been cut short recent
years by most households but you find no evidence why from quantitative data. You
then need to sample different stakeholders in a full circle of rice production such as
retailers who provide agricultural inputs, merchants who connect farmers with
companies, companies, government officials who have executed recent policy changes,
and so forth. This new qualitative sample will be important for you to construe what is
going on in your quantitative data.
Hope it helps.
Best,
kien
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Han Ping Fung added an answer April 16, 2018
What is the best way of sampling in an explanatory sequential mixed methods
research study?
Sequential explanatory design in mixed method research is started off with quantitative
then follow by qualitative research. During the 1st stage of quantitative research, you
can apply random sampling in order to generalize to the entire population. Based on
your quantitative findings, you can select certain samples / respondents conveniently /
randomly (from the previous sample pool) to perform the 2nd stage of your qualitative
research e.g. in-depth interview to solicit insight that you can't extract from the 1st
stage quantitative research. For an example, you can refer to this article.
Article Relationship between Team Satisfaction and Project Performan...
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David L Morgan added an answer April 16, 2018
Qualitative sampling is purposive in nature, so that the participants you select can serve
a distinct "purpose." In the case of an explanatory sequential design, your purpose is to
improve your understanding of the quantitative results, so you should design a sample
that meets this goal. For example, you might select outliers from a regression analysis
(or simple scatter plot). Or you might decide that you need to learn more about the
differences between people who score either high or low on some key variable. The
key point is that the results of your quantitative research should define the purposes
that define your qualitative sample.
As Kien Trung Nguyen points out, you can do this either by recontacting appropriate
members of your original quantitative sample, or by drawing a new sample that meets
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_best_way_of_sampling_in_an_explanatory_sequential_mixed_methods_research_study/1 3/5
2/6/23, 2:47 AM (2) What is the best way of sampling in an explanatory sequential mixed methods research study? | ResearchGate

your purposive criteria.

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Han Ping Fung added an answer April 17, 2018
Hi David, agreed the 2nd stage i.e. qualitative sampling should be "purposive" - the
word that I was struggling to look for in writing my previous post. Thanks.
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Tichaona Mapolisa added an answer April 17, 2018
Thanks very much for the academically nourishing responses. I am sure that I am not the
only one benefiting from these scholarly rich contributions.
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Jorge Cruz-Cárdenas added an answer April 17, 2018
Hello Tichaona
In the qualitative phase, you can apply a combination of convenience sampling and
theoretical sampling, until you reach the saturation point (point where no new
categories or themes emerge). In the quantitative phase, a sample t​h​ … Read more
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Zaydoon Mohammad Al Hatamleh added an answer November 1, 2019
In addition to the rich contributions from all above scholars, you need to make sure that
each objective of your research is perfectly aligned with its corresponding phase in
your seq. Explanatory Research Design phases.
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Wezira Ahmed added an answer January 12, 2020
Is it advisable to use stratified random sampling for explanatory sequential mixed-
methods study ( quantitative part)?
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David L Morgan added an answer January 12, 2020
The goal of the qualitative portion of this design is to maximize its explanatory power.
That is why, as I explained earlier, the best choice is purposive sampling.
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Bridget Graney added an answer January 14, 2020
David L Morgan , is there a modified sequential explanatory design? Or is what I'm
describing an embedded design? I want to do the qual interviews by selecting
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