The Merits of Mixing Methods in Evaluation

Evaluators are challenged to understand human behavior in all of its natural complexity and individuality. Our work is conducted in natural settings, where history and context matter, where human behavior traces complex patterns of influence and relationship, where what is meaningful to those in the setting is both phenomenological and structural, arising from both lived experiences and the societal institutions that frame and shape those experiences. Engaging this complexity requires not a privileging of just one way of knowing and valuing, but rather a marshalling of all of our ways of understanding in a framework that honors diversity and respects difference. This framework is advanced in this article as a mixed-method way of thinking. A presentation of key concepts in the framework is followed by case examples from the US.