3.P3.2 CARACTERIZACIÓN MORFOLOGICA,COMPOSICIONAL Y ESTRUCTURAL

This study used a longitudinal, sequential explanatory, mixed methods design following procedures proposed by Creswell and Plano Clark (2011). Our study maintained a positivist epistemology throughout, as the final phase of the study used the qualitative findings to validate and explain the trends in the quantitative data, rather than to create new theoretical models.

The study drew from the worldview of pragmatism. Pragmatism is typically associated with mixed methods research (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007). The focus of pragmatism research is on the “…question asked rather than the methods, and multiple methods of data collection inform the problems under study” (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007, p.22). Pragmatism allows researchers to test hypotheses from numerous perspectives. Accordingly, this study used a positivist epistemology for the quantitative phase, as the researchers recognise that all phenomena can be reduced to empirical indicators representing one version of the truth (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009). For the qualitative phase, the study drew from transcendental realism with the belief “...that social phenomenon exist not only in the mind but also in the objective world...” (Miles & Huberman, 1994, p. 4). The researcher agrees that social phenomena (for our study,

the immersion of a therapy student into clinical placements) may have a significant influence over human behaviour (for our study, the therapy students’ EI) because people construe social phenomena in familiar ways (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Thus, to understand the potential influence of clinical placements on EI, it is necessary to describe the experiences that students had in common during placements.

Mixed methods research has been defined as:

"... the type of research in which a researcher or team of researchers combines elements of qualitative and quantitative research approaches (e.g., use of qualitative and quantitative viewpoints, data collection, analysis, inference techniques) for the broad purposes of breadth and depth of understanding and corroboration (Johnson, Onwuegbuzie, & Turner, 2007, p.123).

Quantitative methods have some limitations. For example, when quantitative data is used by itself, the voices, thoughts, or the perceptions of the participants cannot be directly heard, and the context on which participants base their responses cannot be understood. Qualitative research also has weaknesses including the personal biases that the researcher brings when interpreting data and difficulty generalising findings to a larger group (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). Mixed methods allow the strengths of one approach to diminish the weaknesses of the other approach (Ivankova & Stick, 2007).

3.1.1 Sequential explanatory design

This study used a sequential explanatory design – a mixed methods design type proposed by Creswell and Plano Clark (2011). The sequential explanatory design involves two distinct phases of data collection and a third phase of integration and exploration of the two sets of data. A sequential explanatory design commences with the collection and subsequent analysis of quantitative data. Then, the qualitative data is collected and analysed to explain the quantitative results obtained in the first phase (Ivankova & Stick, 2007). The rationale for using this approach is that the

the research problem. The qualitative data and their analysis refine and explain those statistical results by exploring participants’ views in more depth.” (Ivankova, Creswell, & Stick, 2006, p.5). Advantages of a sequential explanatory design include the

straightforwardness of the design and the opportunity to explore the quantitative results in more depth by drawing on the qualitative results. The limitations of a sequential explanatory design include the extended time required to collect and the comprehensive analysis required to integrate both types of data (Ivankova et al., 2006). Figure 3.1 depicts a sequential explanatory design in its simplest form.

Figure 3.1: An overview of a sequential explanatory mixed methods design (adapted from Creswell and Plano Clark, 2011).

The sequential explanatory design was selected for our study as it allows the qualitative findings to give insights into the mechanisms that occur during clinical placements that the therapy students perceived to be influential in their baseline and the changes in EI scores over the final 16-month period of the students’ university program. When using mixed methods Creswell and Plano Clark (2011) state that these three characteristics should be incorporated:

 use quantitative and qualitative approaches in a single study or multiple phases of the same study;

 collect and analyse rigorous and persuasive quantitative and qualitative data;  mix, integrate, or link the two sets of data concurrently and allow one dataset

to build on the other; or embed one data set into the other.

Our study adhered to these three characteristics in the following ways. Our study included quantitative and qualitative data collection in Phase 1 and Phase 2 respectively. We collected and analysed quantitative and qualitative data that are

related, and in the final phase, we integrated the data sets where we used the qualitative data to validate the quantitative findings.

3.1.2 Longitudinal design

Longitudinal research is defined “...as research emphasising the study of change and containing at minimum three repeated observations on at least one of the substantive constructs of interest” (Ployhart & Vandenberg, 2009, p. 97). The longitudinal design is useful in charting and analysing growth and development over time and for

establishing causal relationships (Ployhart & Vandenberg, 2009). In our study, data were collected at three time points (before, during, and after the therapy students’ clinical placements) across the final 16-months of the students’ university program. The longitudinal design allowed for an initial set of EI scores to be collected which gave insight into the students’ baseline EI scores before therapy students commenced full- time placements. The subsequent second and third sets of data collection gave insights into the changing relationship between the dependent variable (EI scores) and the independent variables (the clinical placements) over the final stages of the students’ university program. The business students were the control group as they completed no clinical or work-based placements as a requirement of their university program.

3.1.3 Summary of the research design

Figure 3.2 provides a comprehensive summary of each of the three phases and includes the timing of each phase, the procedures used to collect data in each phase, the analysis tools, outcomes of the analysis, and the journal articles and chapters that were published from each set of analyses.

Figure 3.2: Detailed summary of the longitudinal, sequential explanatory, mixed methods design.