The mix of research methods in the leading tourism journals: 2000-2009

The issue of method is central to tourism research. Over the past two decades, the call for greater quality tourism research has turned its focus on to the methods adopted by researchers – and the need to redress a perceived imbalance between the amount of quantitative research published and that based on qualitative, mixed method and theoretical approaches. The purpose of this article is to determine the mix of research methods published in the three leading tourism journals. This study involved a content analysis of 1617 articles published between 2000 and 2009 in three most prominent tourism journals (i.e. Tourism Management, Annals of Tourism Research, and Journal of Travel Research). It was found that 53.9 per cent of articles employed purely quantitative methods, 19 per cent of articles used purely qualitative methods, 11.2 per cent employed a mixed qualitative/quantitative method, and 15.9 per cent were conceptual in nature. An increase was observed in the amount of qualitative research published over this period; however there was a continued dominance of quantitative research. This paper offers guidance to both tourism researchers and leading tourism journals about their role in answering the call for more, and better quality articles based on qualitative and mixed method research.