During the last five years, the number of studies using mixed methods in top international public administration journals has grown rapidly, but current systematic literature analyses of mixed research in public administration are focused on the period prior to 2018. Therefore, it is necessary to examine and analyze public administration mixed research that has taken placed during the last five years (2018—2022) to help us understand and grasp the current latest developments and characteristics in the application of mixed methods in public administration research.

This paper systematically analyzes 126 mixed methods research articles that were published in seven top public administration journals between 2018 and 2022. The mixed studies were coded in terms of three dimensions: publication characteristics (time, journal, topic, and authors), research methodology (study level, data collection, and analytical methods), and mixed study design (type, purpose, and integration).

Individual analyses and comparisons with those articles published between 2011 and 2017 reveal that mixed methods have been more widely utilized in public administration research during the past five years, as evidenced by the following: ① Growth in the total number of publications. A total of 126 mixed methods papers were published in top public administration journals during the past five years, with an annual growth rate of 21.3 percent; ② The number of mixed research articles published in each journal tends to be balanced. The top three journals, in terms of the number of publications, are PMR, PA, and JPART; ③ The theoretical themes have become more comprehensive. In addition to the traditional popular topics in public administration (such as collaborative governance, organizational innovation, accountability, leadership, public-private partnerships, bureaucratic control, street-level bureaucracy, representative bureaucracy, etc.), which are all widely used, the emerging topics, such as reputation management and knowledge production, have seen rapid growth; ④ The national origins of the participating scholars have become more extensive. A total of 177 authors from 25 countries participated in the publication of mixed studies, with the largest distribution of authors from the United States, the Netherlands, and China.

This paper also identifies an explosive growth in embedded mixed research designs, which has led to dramatic changes in the methods of collecting and analyzing data, the purpose of the research design, and the way mixed methods studies are integrated. Finally, through cross-analysis, this paper demonstrates the distributional characteristics of the five mixed research designs and the different research methods across research themes, thus contributing to our understanding of the current state of mixed methods research in public management, guiding future research agendas, and enhancing the normativity of mixed methods.