A failure to converge? The use of convergent designs in mixed methods research

Prior studies show that what are known as “convergent” designs are the most common form of mixed methods research, yet there has been too little investigation into what researchers actually do when they use convergent designs. This study addresses that gap in the literature by investi-gating not only the prevalence of convergent designs but also the types of convergent designs used and the degree of integration in studies that used this design. I used content analysis to ex-amine a random sample of 500 articles from the Web of Science that mentioned mixed methods and were published in 2023. The results show that nearly 70 percent of all studies used conver-gent designs. In addition, the level of integration was very low, with a median of 0.4 on a scale from zero (no integration) to four (thorough integration). Overall, despite their popularity, con-vergent designs remain a problematic technique in mixed methods research.