Beyond Identifying Emergent Themes in Mixed Methods Research Studies: The Role of Economic Indices: The Thematic Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and the Thematic Concentration Ratio

The formal use of the technique of quantitizing has made, and continues to make, a valuable contribution to the mixed methods research field, inspired by the groundbreaking first edition of Miles and Huberman’s (1984) book that was published during the height of the so-called paradigm wars of the 1980s. However, unfortunately, until very recently, the overwhelming majority of quantitizing has involved descriptive-based quantitizing, and scant attention has been paid to more advanced types of quantitizing, which include exploratory-based quantitizing, measurement-based quantitizing, and inferential-based quantitizing, as described by Onwuegbuzie (in press) and Onwuegbuzie and Johnson (2021). Yet, these forms of quantitizing help to enhance the quality of meta-inferences in mixed methods research studies, which, in turn, enhance the meaning-making process. With this goal of enhancing the meaning-making process in mind, the purpose of this current editorial has been to demonstrate how two economic indices, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and the Concentration Ratio, can help to contextualize emergent themes that have been subjected to descriptive-based quantitizing—yielding what I term as a Thematic Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and the Thematic Concentration Ratio. In particular, after describing in detail these two economic indices in a step-by-step manner, I use real data to illustrate how these indices not only can serve as additional descriptive-based quantitizing, but also can lead to exploratory-based quantitizing and inferential-based quantitizing.