Background: Positionality captures how the researcher is positioned, personally, socially, and politically, in relation to the study's context. A researcher's positionality influences each step of the project, which makes it a critical component to make visible in publications. Purpose: The purpose of this research article is to explore current considerations of positionality in engineering education research by highlighting example statements across journals and modes of inquiry. We considered qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches to engaging with questions of interest to the field. Design/Method: We surveyed three journals in the field of engineering education:

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Background: Transfer students in engineering must navigate a myriad of information sources to obtain accurate information on how to matriculate into a 4-year institution. Although some institutional and state-level initiatives attempt to streamline the transfer process, students still report difficulties. Purpose: This article explores the extent to which web-based transfer information is fragmented across institutional websites and written using communicative strategies that could limit comprehension. Accordingly, this study characterizes information asymmetries-gaps in information-that affect transfer students in terms of two constructs: fragmentation and language. Method: We employed a convergent fully integrated mixed-methods design with a stratified random sample of 38 US engineering degree-granting institutions. The connections between the webpages were transformed into networks and clustered using k-means and partitioning around medoids with measures of dispersion and centrality. A purposeful nested sample of 16 institutions was taken based on the clusters and explored using a two-cycle mixed-methods coding protocol to understand how fragmentation and language interact to create information asymmetries. The resulting themes from each construct were integrated to develop narratives across the sampled institutions. Conclusions:We found the web-based information for transfer students to be a messy web of loosely connected structures with language that complicates understanding. We identified four fragmentation themes illustrating how transfer information is organized and six language themes capturing linguistic patterns across the webpages. We offer strategies for researchers and practitioners based on the narratives we developed. K E Y W O R D S engineering pathways, mixed-methods research, transfer students | INTRODUCTIONGaps in information-that is, information asymmetries-are ever present in how institutions and their stakeholders interact with one another (Dill & Soo, 2004;Kivistö & Hölttä, 2008). If students cannot find the information needed regarding processes and procedures related to their academic programs, they often face difficulties in progressing toward their degrees (Nodine et al., 2012; Van Noy et al., 2016), and challenges are magnified when existing

Background Mixed methods research designs in engineering education often frame the “mixed” aspect of the design from the perspective of data collection. However, intentional mixing throughout the research design—particularly during data analysis—may enable richer meta‐inferences about a phenomenon. Purpose This paper provides examples of strategies for mixing during data analysis in mixed methods program evaluation in engineering education. Although the context is program evaluation, the procedures are applicable in engineering education research more broadly. Scope/Method This review presents examples of mixed methods analysis strategies in the context of a data set with qualitative and quantitative data from a global engineering program at a large Mid‐Atlantic university. The structure of the examples presents mixed research questions, pragmatic purposes for such studies, and examples of different mixing strategies for the analysis stage. The mixing strategies highlighted include extreme case sampling, converting, creating a blended variable, blending variables and themes across strands, and cross‐case comparison. Conclusions This review of mixed methods in program evaluation prompted a reflection of processes in the design of studies, how the designs are described beyond the usual taxonomies in the mixed methods literature, and implications for the greater community of engineering education researchers. Five mixed methods designs were formulated around the mixing strategies.

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