Establishing Interpretive Consistency When Mixing Approaches: Role of Sampling Designs in Evaluations

The goal of this chapter is to recommend quality criteria to guide evaluators' selections of sampling designs when mixing approaches. First, we contextualize our discussion of quality criteria and sampling designs by discussing the concept of interpretive consistency and how it impacts sampling decisions. Embedded in this discussion are challenges impacting interpretive consistency. Strategies and an integrative sampling framework comprising published frameworks are presented to facilitate evaluators' decisions about selecting sampling designs in accordance to specific criteria. We conclude by presenting an illustrative application of mixed sampling design criteria to a published mixed evaluation study as a heuristic example of a way of embedding sampling criteria in a mixed evaluation.