The paper aims to introduce the reflection upon the Mixed Methods (MM) approach and evaluation research that will be attained in the fol-lowing contributions. It is by now largely recognised how rarely a single evaluation strate-gy can fully capture the entire complexity of social phenomena hap-pening in the "real" world. Nowadays, many recognise that combining different strategies and techniques within one evaluative process is more efficient than using conventional evaluation approaches with a single research strategy.
This article recomposes the development of a need for a MM ap-proach in Italy. Moreover, other papers in this special issue are briefly presented by identifying a common thread, represented by the reflec-tion suggested in the paper by Jennifer Greene.
Keywords: Empirical social research, evaluative research, Mixed Methods Research, theory, research practices, operational experiences