Milieus and Mixed Methods

In the literature on religion and secularity, scholars often use mono-method strategies, either quantitative or qualitative, in order to identify broad social groups – “milieus” or “social aggregates” and thus gain better understanding of the great diversity of religious beliefs and practices in a given population. This paper identifies different validity problems of such studies and claims that mixed methods may be used in order to better address these problems. By combining representative surveys with semi-standardized interviews, large scale groups (e.?g. milieus) can be described and some of their inner workings explained in a more valid way. The article shows the steps of such a mixed methods research strategy, arguing for (a) a common central question in a realist philosophical framework (b) nested qualitative and quantitative samples with relatively large n on the qualitative side, (c) an integrated data collection on the level of items and leading questions, (d) abductive-iterative data analysis, and (e) an addressing of validity issues with the help of mixed methods. Two nested mixed methods studies are used to exemplify these research strategies: one on religion and spirituality in Switzerland and one on the “evangelical milieu” in Switzerland.