Strategies Associated with the quantitative approach:

• Experiments: include true experiments, with the random assignment of subjects to treatment conditions.

• Surveys: include cross- sectional and longitudinal studies using questionnaires or structured interviews for data collection, with the intent of generalizing from a sample to a population.

Strategies Associated with the qualitative approach:

• Narrative research: a form of inquiry in with the researcher studies the lives of individuals and asks one or more individuals to provide stories about their lives. This information is then retold or restoried by the researcher into narrative chronology. In the end, the narrative combines views from the participant’s life with those of the researcher’s life in a collaborative narrative.

• Phenomenological research: in which the researcher identifies the “essence” of human experiences concerning a phenomenon, as described by participants in a study. Understanding the “lived experiences” marks phenomenology as a philosophy as well as a method, and the procedure involves studying a small number of subjects through extensive and prolonged engagement to develop patterns and relationships of meaning. In this process, the researcher “brackets” his or her own experiences in order to understand those of the participants in the study.

• Ethnographies: in which the researcher studies an intact cultural group in a natural setting over a prolonged period of time by collecting, primarily, observational data. The research process is flexible and typically evolves contextually in response to the lived realities encountered in the field setting.

• Grounded theory: in which the researcher attempts to derive a general, abstract theory of a process, action, or interaction grounded in the views of participants in a study. This process involves using multiple stages of data collection and the refinement and interrelationship of categories of information. Two primary characteristics of this design are the constant comparison of data with emerging categories and theoretical sampling of different groups to maximize the similarities and the differences of information.

• Case studies: in which the researcher explores in depth a program, an event, an activity, a process, or one or more individuals. The case(s) are bounded by time and activity, and researchers collect detailed information using a variety of data collection procedures over a sustained period of time.

Strategies Associated with the mixed methods approach:

• Sequential procedures: in which the researcher seeks to elaborate on or expand the findings of one method with another method. This may involve beginning with a qualitative method for exploratory purposes and following up with a quantitative method with a large sample so that the researcher can generalize results to a population. Alternatively, the study may begin with a quantitative method in which theories or concepts are tested, to be followed by a qualitative method involving detailed exploration with a few cases or individuals.

• Concurrent procedures: in which the researcher converges quantitative and qualitative data in order to provide a comprehensive analysis of the research problem. In this design, the investigator collects both forms of data at the same time during the study and then integrates the information in the interpretation of the overall results. Also, in this design, the researcher nests one form of data within another, larger data collection procedure in order to analyze different questions or levels of units in an organization.

•Transformative procedures: in which the researcher uses a theoretical lens as in overarching perspective within a design that contains both quantitative and qualitative data. This lens provides a framework for topics of interest, methods for collecting data, and outcomes or changes anticipated by the study. Within this lens could be data collection method that involves a sequential or a concurrent approach.