Making the Story Better: Joys and Struggles of Using Mixed Methods to Study Families

Abstract: Combining qualitative and quantitative methods provides a unique opportunity to shed light on the profoundly complex patterns and processes that we address as family scholars. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of studies of families are single-method. This raises the question of why mixed-methods approaches are not more commonly applied. In this talk, I illustrate the benefits of applying mixed methods with an example from the Within-Family Differences Study and highlight the challenges of conducting mixed-methods research.