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In October 2018, Armed Forces & Society published a special issue dedicated to broadening the perspective on military cohesion from the narrow focus on 20th and 21st Western state militaries and the microlevel. The special issue emphasized the need for a theoretical and methodological broadening of the study of cohesion: In order to understand the majority of armed groups in the world, it is necessary to investigate macro- and mesolevel preconditions of microlevel cohesion. Such preconditions include the existence of states, nations, and modern military organization. These are specific to modern, Western contexts, and rarely feature in historical or non-Western cases. In many cases, investigating these preconditions requires qualitative methods. In a critical response, Siebold contested some of the arguments of the special issue, claiming that our argument was exaggerated and our methodologies inadequate. In this reply, we seek to clarify some of the issues and arguments at stake.

This paper provides a framework for developing sampling designs in mixed methods research. First, we present sampling schemes that have been associated with quantitative and qualitative research. Second, we discuss sample size considerations and provide sample size recommendations for each of the major research designs for quantitative and qualitative approaches. Third, we provide a sampling design typology and we demonstrate how sampling designs can be classified according to time orientation of the components and relationship of the qualitative and quantitative sample. Fourth, we present four major crises to mixed methods research and indicate how each crisis may be used to guide sampling design considerations. Finally, we emphasize how sampling design impacts the extent to which researchers can generalize their findings.

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