Looping back on some issues in qualitative research

and/or where has she been?

Currently I am busy with family commitments. I had a short holiday over the Easter break, and I am also working on a pile of documents, some reviews of grant proposals which are due soon and multiple new Qualitative Research manuscripts which continue to be submitted apace from all over the world.

I read qualitative studies regularly, sometimes even daily. I can see so clearly these days how people trip themselves up with assumptions about qualitative research. One constant issue I notice is decisions around where to be tight and organised and where to stay in flow, just letting things unravel and follow their progress. I probably should make a diagram but well…lazy. People often mistake where they need to be prepared and engaged and where they can take their foot off the accelerator (gas) pedal.

The main areas to be tight, that is, organised, well prepared, intensively planned is the who what and where. The why comes well before this. You should know who your cohort is that belongs in your study. In qualitative studies usually this is people who have lived experience of the phenomenon under investigation. You need inclusion and exclusion criteria, and a clear picture of where these people are and how you will find them. Do they self-select and/or do you have a brief quiz to find out if they have the experiences you are looking to better understand?

The areas where I would not do too much planning and prep is for the discussion that occurs in the interview. You will have an interview schedule that you provided to the ethics committee. However, in the interview don’t rigidly work through your questions. Seek to find out about the person. Be curious, go deep. Listen intently. Be compassionate. Let the person wander about in the topic and then you can say something like “It is so interesting to hear your experiences of X. I am wondering whether we might return to something you said earlier about Y. I think you may have more to say about that.” You are the guide, not the compass.

The other area where planning helps is understanding the method and the analysis in advance. You are not doing qualitative research you are doing a qualitative research study using a method which has a name and a history and key leaders or guides. This method supports the process of analysis which you know well and have potentially practiced before you start recruiting. That is, make up some data and practice using the analysis techniques advocated by the method, e.g. coding.

Useful preparation - read 10 papers that employ the method. Anything you want to know? Write to the authors. They may not write back but they might. Any similarities between the papers? Any massive differences. Keep journalling about this. Keep noticing, keep on being curious. You’ve got this.