Options a mixed methods researcher will actually consider, and what each one means by integration, because that word covers very different things depending on who is using it. We make one of these, so treat the MM Studio row with appropriate scepticism.
| Cost | What integration means here | Best at | Weakest at | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MM Studio | $15 a month or $129 a year | A staged process producing joint displays and rated findings | Defensible integration, integrated APA reporting, iPad field collection | Does not code or run deep statistics; no team coding |
| MAXQDA | High per seat | Qual and quant in one workbench, with visual cross-analysis | Doing the whole study in one application; visual tools | Cost; integration is one capability among many |
| NVivo | High per seat | Qualitatively led, via cases, attributes and crosstabs | Breadth, literature review, large corpora, teams | Cost; quantitative depth needs XLSTAT |
| Dedoose | Low monthly per user | Excerpts paired with descriptors, then charted | Team coding, price, any platform | Cloud storage needs IRB wording; no strength ratings |
| A spreadsheet | Free | Whatever you decide it means | Total flexibility; still how many published studies do it | No audit trail, no structure, easy to fool yourself |
Mixed methods studies get criticized for one thing more than any other: the two strands are presented next to each other but never actually joined. The qualitative chapter says one thing, the quantitative chapter says another, and the discussion asserts that they converge without showing the work.
This usually is not carelessness. It is sequencing. Integration tends to be scheduled last, after both analyses are complete, at the point where time has run out. Every tool on this list addresses that in a different way, and it is worth knowing which way before choosing.
MM Studio, because neither strand leads and the joint display is the output. MAXQDA also handles this well inside one application.
Any of them. The question is whether you want the follow-up qualitative work in the same program, which points at MAXQDA or NVivo, or joined afterwards as a distinct stage, which points at MM Studio.
NVivo or MAXQDA are natural, since the qualitative strand is doing the leading and building the instrument.
Dedoose. None of the ReliCheck apps do simultaneous multi-coder work.
The evidence-strength rating in MM Studio exists for exactly this conversation, since it forces an explicit judgment about how well each strand supports each integrated finding rather than leaving it implied in prose.
We make MM Studio, and it is the narrowest tool here. It does not code transcripts and it does not run regressions. It expects that work to happen in Quala and Quanta, or in whatever tools you already use, and it concentrates entirely on joining the results and defending the join.
If you want one application for the entire study, MAXQDA or NVivo is the better answer and this page will not pretend otherwise. If you have four coders, Dedoose is. If your integration currently happens in a spreadsheet at the end and a reviewer has already asked about it, that is the gap MM Studio was built for.