The current status of mixed methods designs in applied Linguistics: A corpus study of ISC journals

Evaluating the design characteristics plays a pivotal role in promoting principled Mixed Methods Research (MMR). Although the methodological rigor of mixed designs has been among the most debated topics, scant attention has been paid to the investigation of Applied Linguistics (AL) Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC) journals. Addressing this gap, the present exploratory sequential mixed methods design aimed to analyze the nomenclature, research questions, research designs, sampling procedures, and meta-inferences of 303 MMR articles published in 12 leading ISC journals in the Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. The findings indicated that exploratory sequential designs and identical sequential sampling procedures were more frequently used in the corpus. Moreover, while the findings revealed a growing awareness regarding the nomenclature, few studies employed explicit hybrid research questions. Similarly, meta-inferences were often treated as parallel findings rather than fully integrated inferences, suggesting a need for more robust integration across strands. The study highlights the importance of conducting principled MMR by shifting the conceptualization of designs from the method to the methodology level. It further argues for a systemic view of MMR in which there is a cyclical interaction among fully integrated stages of an MMR design. Finally, the implications of the findings for MMR researchers, reviewers, editors, and educators are discussed.