Pragmatism: Philosophical platform for mixed methods research

The paper aims at presenting the philosophy of pragmatism as an epistemological framework for mixed methods research. The author starts with brief characteristics of this relatively recent approach to research in the social sciences and uses Morgan’s clarification of the genesis of „metaphysical“ paradigm for qualitative research as a platform for analysing the main reasons why mixed methods research has been strongly criticized and refused. Then she shifts her attention to classical ragmatists – W. James, J. Dewey and Ch. S. Pierce, and makes an attempt to show mixed methods research as a legitimate approach to research in the social sciences having equally important status as quantitative or qualitative research. In order to prove her point, the author gives a detailed analysis of the pragmatists’ theory of inquiry, their understanding of truth, experience and other philosophical categories. She concludes that mixed methods research has great potential to solve research questions whose solution proves impossible for rigid advocates of either of the two currently dominant
approaches.