Many studies in education draw upon multiple data collection and analysis techniques.

As always, research techniques are used as part of an overall research design that has been crafted to respond to specific research questions.

Multiple techniques may be used:

To address multiple research questions:

1. a)as different research questions require the collection and analysis of different kinds of data;
   

Where a multi-phase study is needed to answer research questions

2. b)the research has multiple stages, such that a certain kind of data that is initially collected informs a subsequent phase of data collection;
   

e.g. perhaps interviews might be used to determine a set of response categories to incorporate in a questionnaire to ensure a survey offers respondents suitable options

Sometimes the different phases will be planned as part of the research design, but sometimes the need for a further type of data becomes clear when we analyse our original data (this is sometimes called ‘theoretical sampling’).

To allow triangulation

100. c)methodological triangulation is used where different slices of data are collected in relation to a single research question, to see if analysis of the different slices of data corroborate each other;
     

e.g. if exploring whether group work is used in classes we might ask teachers, and ask students, and observe a sample of classes. (It might seem that just observing classes would be sufficient, but the project resources may only allow us to observe a small sample of classes, which we can supplement by asking participants about their typical experiences in classes. The interview data suffers from being indirect (people’s recollections and perceptions) where the observations may be considered a limited and probably unrepresentative sample of the ‘population’ of lessons.

A common term used to describe studies employing multiple techniques is ‘mixed methods’ but this terms is sometimes used rather loosely, and can mean different things to different authors.