AI-enabled Qualitative Analysis: Mixed-Methods SDoH Study

The PLoS One study protocol (Phonyiam et al., 2026) uses an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design to study social determinants of health and postnatal well-being among Thai women with type 2 diabetes, planning a 50-participant survey and 12 qualitative interviews.

• The protocol was published on July 29, 2026 and recruitment began in September 2025, with data collection expected through December 2026 (Phonyiam et al., 2026).
• The quantitative arm will recruit 50 postnatal women and the qualitative arm will include 12 interviews, with extension if saturation is not reached (Phonyiam et al., 2026).
• Instrument validation in March 2026 showed item- and scale-level content validity indices of 1.0 for the Thai translation of the Postnatal Well-being in Transition scale (Phonyiam et al., 2026).
• The protocol specifies SPSS v25 for descriptive statistics and Atlas.ti v9 for qualitative coding, then integrates findings via statistics-by-themes joint displays (Phonyiam et al., 2026).

What happened: The PLoS One protocol (Phonyiam et al., 2026) documents an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study with instrument translation followed by quantitative and qualitative data collection.

The protocol translates and culturally adapts the 30-item Postnatal Well-being in Transition questionnaire into Thai using the six-stage Beaton process and reports an I-CVI and S-CVI/Ave of 1.0 after expert review (Phonyiam et al., 2026).

The quantitative phase will collect demographics, a 20-item SDoH measure across five domains, and the 30-item well-being scale from 50 postnatal women who delivered within the prior six weeks; SPSS v25 will compute means, SDs, frequencies, and perform item-mean imputation for missing data (Phonyiam et al., 2026).

The qualitative phase will purposively sample 12 participants (six with lowest and six with highest well-being scores) for semi-structured phone interviews, transcribe audio in Thai, and analyse text in Atlas.ti v9 with descriptive coding and theme development (Phonyiam et al., 2026).

The protocol states, "Triangulation is desirable in mixed-methods research because it serves to validate and confirm the phenomena being studied, " and operationalizes integration via statistics-by-themes joint displays and a three-step interpretive framework (Phonyiam et al., 2026).

Implication summary: The PLoS One protocol (Phonyiam et al., 2026) shows how measurable quantitative scores can guide qualitative sampling and how joint displays create integrated meta-inferences.

Researchers should expect that small descriptive quantitative samples (50 participants in this protocol) can still generate useful stratified samples for qualitative follow-up, but they must document recruitment timing and saturation rules as the PLoS One protocol does (Phonyiam et al., 2026).

Method implication: The protocol prioritizes content validation, nested purposeful sampling, blinded coding, and side-by-side joint displays to identify confirmation, expansion, or discordance across methods (Phonyiam et al., 2026).

Practice implication: For teams collecting bilingual interviews, the PLoS One protocol recommends verbatim Thai transcription and cultural adaptation steps before analytic translation, which preserves meaning during coding and integration (Phonyiam et al., 2026).

The PLoS One protocol (Phonyiam et al., 2026) provides a clear template for explanatory sequential mixed-methods work: translate and validate instruments, collect targeted quantitative data, sample extremes for interviews, and integrate via joint displays.

AI-enabled qualitative analysis accelerates every step the protocol prescribes: transcription, translation, thematic extraction, and joint-display construction while keeping verbatim quotations and provenance intact.

If your team plans a mixed-methods SDoH or postnatal well-being study, consider automating transcription and thematic synthesis to reduce time to meta-inference and improve reproducibility.

Start a trial to test these workflows: Try Evidano for free.