Ethnographic and interview research have made significant contributions to cumulative social science and influenced the public conversation around important social issues. However, debates rage over whether the standards of positivistic social science can or should be used to judge the rigor of interpretive methods. I begin this essay by briefly…

This article discusses the importance of mixed-methods research, in particular the value of qualitatively driven mixed-methods research for quantitatively driven domains like educational accountability. The article demonstrates the merits of qualitative thinking by describing a mixed-methods study that focuses on a middle school's system of…

Notes the need for researcher accountability in qualitative analysis, examining strategies used in working with doctoral students and offering suggestions for assessing and publicly disclosing the methodological rigor and analytical defensibility of qualitative research. Introduces tabular strategies for use in documenting the relationship between…