Discussion
Although the number of mixed studies is increasing day by day, these
studies remain weak in terms of quality (Fa‘bregues & Molina-Azorı´n,
2017). To enrich mixed research qualitatively, it is important to
determine the philosophy that fully reflects the nature of the mixed
research method and to create the study based on this philosophy
(Creswell & Plano-Clark, 2011).
There are many meta-synthesis studies examining mixed studies in the
related literature (Alise & Teddlie, 2010; Coates, 2021; Fàbregues &
Molina-Azorín, 2017; Taşçıoğlu et al., 2022). Among the studies, only
Coates (2021) examined mixed studies from a philosophical point of view.
Coates (2021) emphasizes that since philosophical arguments form the
basis of the research, the philosophy that is the basis of the research
should be mentioned in detail in the study. Based on this idea, Coates
(2021) concluded that philosophical assumptions were mentioned in only
81 of the 1,026 mixed studies.
We concluded that many of the mixed studies do not accurately reflect
the characteristics of pragmatism. The current research has concluded
that researchers have difficulties in determining the research question
and keywords specific to the mixed method reflecting the pragmatic
philosophy, revealing the reasons for choosing the mixed method, and
creating the conceptual framework based on pragmatism. When we look at
the parts where researchers are less successful in reflecting the
characteristics of pragmatism, it is noteworthy that these parts are the
only parts that contain the pragmatic philosophy-based nature of mixed
methods research. In these parts, we concluded that the researchers
accepted the mixed research method as the sum of the qualitative and
quantitative tradition, and therefore did not seek a different third way
to reflect the nature of the mixed method. Therefore, the present study
will raise the awareness of researchers to reflect on the nature of
pragmatism.
We have determined that the studies reflect the characteristics of
pragmatism at a good level in terms of the abstract, conceptual
framework, and reasoning. The possible reason for this situation is that
these parts are not only about the nature of pragmatism but also the
nature of scientific research in general. We thought that researchers
who are familiar with qualitative and quantitative research methods and
generally have scientific research experience do not have any difficulty
in reflecting the pragmatic philosophy in these parts. In addition,
pragmatism is a broad-based philosophical approach that can be used not
only in mixed research but also in qualitative and quantitative
research.