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

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 RobinsonSchool 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

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 contextBy 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 RisselSchool 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

Book Reviews