Tribute to Michael D. Fetters

Abstract

Mixed methods research sadly lost a giant in the field and the co-editor in chief of JMMR with the passing of Mike Fetters of the University of Michigan on July 16th, 2023. Mike lost his year-long fight against pancreatic cancer and died at his Michigan “lakeside” home. We find it difficult to adequately summarize Mike’s scholarly and mixed methods life. He was a compassionate family medicine doctor, an innovator in academic scholarship, an international and distinguished Japanese scholar, a gifted linguist, and, above all else, a great human being and friend. Any one of these accomplishments would be sufficient for a distinguished life’s career. Mike became the co-editor in chief of JMMR beginning in 2015 and continued until his illness in 2022. He authored innovative and provocative editorials, such as presenting the equation of 1 + 1= 3 to highlight the added insight (or metainferences, see Fetters, 2020) that comes from combining quantitative and qualitative research (Fetters, 2018; Fetters & Freshwater, 2015). He created a taxonomy of research designs specifying new terminology such as “scaffolding” (Fetters, 2022), recommended the removal of racialized words from our research (Fetters, et al., 2021), advanced a checklist for a quality mixed methods publication (Fetters & Molina-Azorin, 2019b), and suggested a “yin-yang” Eastern philosophy for mixed methods research (Fetters & Molina-Azorin, 2019a). Mike’s editorials with José Molina-Azorin spoke to advancing the field. Looking through the journal’s publications during Mike’s tenure as co-editor in chief shows cutting edge writings by new, emerging scholars, international authors, and the creative combination of data and ideas, such as using the Titanic datasets to teach mixed methods data analysis (Lindemann & Stolz, 2020), or citing the horseless carriage to help understand the development of mixed methods research (Fetters, 2016). The journal grew with the addition of new sections, such as commentaries (see Fetters & Molina-Azorin, 2016), virtual special issues, special topic issues (e.g., COVID mixed methods studies, Fetters & Molina-Azorin, 2020), and debates between leading scholars (Fetters & Molina-Azorin, 2019c). The scholarly impact factor for the journal kept inching higher and higher making it a highly selective publication. Mike mentored many faculty and graduate students, always encouraging their submissions to JMMR. He not only indicated manuscript problems requiring revision but also provided advice on how to address the problems to result in a quality publication. He demonstrated being a scholar, an achievement documented in his voluminous 72-page resume consisting of over 300 publications and scores of grants. Mike added mixed methods to his medical skill set naturally after a masters in epidemiology (quantitative) and a second in bioethics (qualitative).