Mixed methods research in tourism and hospitality journals

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine mixed methods research (MMR) that appeared in eight tourism and hospitality journals (“Annals of Tourism Research”, “Tourism Management”, “Journal of Travel Research”, “Journal of Sustainable Tourism”, “International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management”, “International Journal of Hospitality Management”, “Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management” and “Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research”) from 1998 to 2019.

Design/methodology/approach

This review paper was a mixed methods design and was conducted in three phases. In the first phase, a content analysis was performed to determine if each article could be classified as non-empirical, qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods. In the second phase, descriptive statistics was used to present the number and characteristics of MMR articles. In the third phase, the contributions of MMR to addressing particular issues in tourism and hospitality studies were investigated.

Findings

This study identified 753 mixed methods articles, wherein 482 articles (64%) were published in the chosen tourism publication outlets and 271 (36%) in the chosen hospitality publication outlets. MMR studies having a dominant focus on specific methods (459 articles; 61%) outnumbered those having an equal focus on the qualitative and quantitative parts (294 articles; 39%). In case one method was dominant, this was typically the quantitative. Sequential data collection was prevalent in most of the cases (94.2%). The contributions of MMR to addressing generic and specific research problems were also analyzed.

Originality/value

This is the first comparison of MMR in major tourism and hospitality journals.