Jude Spiers

The Use of Videoconferencing as a Medium for the Qualitative Interview

Qualitative data collection, especially conducting in-person interviews, presents challenges for researchers whose participants are geographically dispersed. Often alternative means of interviewing using communication technology are necessary. This was true for this focused ethnographic research exploring the experiences of participants who were connected to a particular cultural group by virtue of their similar experience but who were not located in the same geographical area. The purpose of this paper is to present the experience of using videoconferencing technology to collect experiential data from undergraduate nursing students and preceptors who were dispersed over a 640,000 square kilometer area in western and northern Canada during a rural hospital-based preceptorship. Recommendations for using videoconferencing as a medium for conducting in-depth qualitative interviews include using a high-bandwidth connection such as SuperNet or Web conferencing, and evaluating whether the type of information sought is likely to be shared in other than in-person face-to-face situations.

Culture, context and community: ethical considerations for global nursing research

High-quality research is essential for the generation of scientific nursing knowledge and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. However, the incorporation of Western bioethical principles in the study design may not be suitable, sufficient or relevant to participants in low-income countries and may indeed be harmful and disrespectful. Before engaging in global health studies, nurses must consider carefully the cultural and social context and values of the proposed setting in order to situate the research within the appropriate ethical framework. The purpose of this paper was to examine the ethical principles and considerations that guide health research conducted in international settings using the example of a qualitative study of Ugandan nurses and nurse-midwives by a Canadian researcher. The application of Western bioethical principles with their emphasis on autonomy fails to acknowledge the importance of relevant contextual aspects in the conduct of global research. Because ethics is concerned with how people interact and live together, it is essential that studies conducted across borders be respectful of, and congruent with, the values and needs of the community in which it occurs. The use of a communitarian ethical framework will allow nurse scientists to contribute to the elimination of inequities between those who enjoy prosperity and good health, and those who do not.

Tech Tips: Using Video Management/ Analysis Technology in Qualitative Research

This article presents tips on how to use video in qualitative research. The author states that, though there many complex and powerful computer programs for working with video, the work done in qualitative research does not require those programs. For this work, simple editing software is sufficient. Also presented is an easy and efficient method of transcribing video clips.

Learning together: a cohort approach to organizational leadership development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the formation of the Leadership Development Initiative (LDI) and to demonstrate how the program was collaboratively tailored to meet the organizational and developmental needs of leaders in the organization, using a learning cohort approach for implementation.Design/methodology/approach – This paper describes how the LDI was designed, implemented, and assessed through its various stages of formation. Beginning with theory, a learning cohort approach was envisioned to not only bridge organizational departments by bringing leaders from all divisions to learn together, but would also be more sustainable in the long term. A participatory action research study was used to enhance program development and to ultimately explore the effectiveness of the LDI.Findings – The LDI was critical to developing leadership and management competencies/skills, organizational networking, relationship building, and fostering a philosophy of leadership as collaborative visiona...

Critical Ethnography, Cultural Safety, and International Nursing Research

Critical qualitative methodology provides a strategy to examine the human experience and its relationship to power and truth. Cultural safety is a concept that has been applied to nursing education and practice and refers to interactions that acknowledge and respect the unique cultural background of patients. It recognizes power inequities between caregivers who belong to dominant cultures and patients who may belong to oppressed groups. Culture is interpreted from a critical constructivist perspective as a fluid relational process that is enacted contextually. The purpose of this paper is to examine the congruence between and

Symposium Conclusion - Issues of Validity: Behavioral Concepts, Their Derivation and Interpretation

Qualitative inquiry that commences with the concept, rather than the phenomenon itself, is subject to violating the tenet of induction, thus is exposed to particular threats of invalidity. In this symposium, using the examples of the concepts of uncertainty, trust, vulnerability and suffering, and interview and videotaped data, we discuss strategies to maintain the inductive thrust, and hence validity, during data analysis. The authors present the use of a skeletal framework and scaffold as techniques to “frame? the concept, while, at the same time, continuing to further develop the concept.

Alone in Eden Care Aides’ Perceptions of Consistent Assignments

The Eden Alternative® is a philosophy of care and transformational model aimed at increasing quality of life for nursing home residents by enhancing institutional environments and restructuring delivery of care. Restructured care consists of three fundamental components: resident care provided primarily by care aides, enhanced responsibilities for care aides, and consistent assignment of residents to care aides. Researchers have focused on resident and family satisfaction with the model, but there is limited research evaluating the impact of the model on nursing home employees. This article is focused on their experiences. Convenience and purposive sampling were used to recruit 22 care aides from five nursing homes in a western Canadian city. Experiential interview data were collected and analyzed utilizing constant comparison to identify common themes. Although care aides initially welcomed the restructuring, they described gradually becoming overwhelmed by the work, confined by consistent assignments, and isolated from colleagues and other residents.

The Pink Elephant Paradox (or, Avoiding the Misattribution of Data)

The pink elephant paradox refers to the threat to inductive thinking caused by the difficulty of inadvertently proving the existence of a concept or phenomena just because it overtly or insidiously exists in ones thoughts, leading to misattribution, or miscategorization of data, and thus subverting inductive processes. As Morse and Mitcham discussed in Part I, this is reduced through inductive strategies, including processes of saturation, replication, and verification. In this article, I present a story of how the phenomenon of interest in nurse-patient interaction evolved and emerged through a number of qualitative projects. At each stage, concepts were identified, explored, and developed in order to more elucidate the central phenomenon. I will show how, while at times I could identify and avoid the pink elephant, at other times there were one or a herd lurking in the shadows or rampaging through my work. I think that discussing both the successes and pit falls is one way to acknowledge and address the fact that, although we accept the evolution in ideas and thought processes in qualitative research, we still may not be comfortable in articulating the far more complex and insidious threats to inductive processes. Some schools of qualitative inquiry consider analysis of the literature a hindrance—in fact an invalidity—before commencing fieldwork. To the contrary, when a researcher is studying a concept rather than letting a concept emerge from a setting, it is essential to undertake a thorough theoretical and conceptual analysis of the literature (Morse, 2000; Morse et al, 1996). In my own program of research, the concept analysis was a study in, and of, itself, with the purpose of examining the maturity of concepts, and the explicit and implicit theoretical and research models. The literature constituted data that could be analyzed and formed the basis for a reconceptualization of the original concept by contrasting it with the theory derived from the fieldwork studies.

Reflection/Commentary on a Past Article: “Verification Strategies for Establishing Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Research”: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/160940690200100202

“Verification strategies for establishing reliability and validity in qualitative research” is one of the International Journal of Qualitative Methods’ (IJQM) most downloaded articles over the past 18 years. To date, it has been cited in 4,398 articles tracked in Google Scholar. At the time of its publication, in IJQM’s Volume 2 in 2002, there was still lively debate about the role and nature of reliability and validity in qualitative inquiry. This was a time in which the seminal work of Guba and Lincoln in the 1980s had been sufficiently disseminated to several generations of qualitative researchers. Discussion as to what rigor ought to be—its dimensions, parameters, and terminology—gradually obscured a subtle but important shift in the way qualitative researchers conceptualized rigor—from integral processes implemented by the researcher to standards and criteria utilized by the reader. The marginalization of reliability and validity—language familiar to researchers using quantitative methods—and replacement with qualitative-specific criteria, goals, and standards for rigor, each with their own terms to suit specific contexts, had created a confusing and unworkable landscape in which criteria and processes for establishing rigor became less clear. Our group, which had come together in the early 2000, was comprised of Jan Morse, three postdoctoral fellows (J. S., M. M., and K. O.), and a new assistant professor (M. B.). Each of us came with similar problematic notions of trustworthiness that, on the surface, appeared to reflect the principles of qualitative inquiry processes, but which in fact did little to support the development of strategies the researcher could use to incrementally construct a rigorous outcome. In our various subfields of health care, we each encountered the rise of guidelines, standards, and checklists being adopted with the intent to itemize qualitative inquiry. The conceptualizing of this article was a key mentoring experience for us. There were two primary outcomes: First, the terms reliability and validity were not the sole purview of quantitative research. We concluded that reliability and validity were simply concepts that were equally applicable to qualitative inquiry. Reliability in qualitative research is rooted in the idea of data adequacy, which makes it possible to show consistent support for one’s analysis across participants. Validity, on the other hand, is related to data appropriateness, which makes it possible to provide an accurate account of the experiences of participants within and beyond the immediate context. The second outcome was a return to the fundamental responsibility of the researcher for the continual checking and adjustment of research processes (i.e., verification) to ensure that the results are robust, rather than a justification of the limitations and deficiencies written after the study is completed. The responsibility for assessing rigor is in the purview of the researcher, not the reader. This article was not easy to write. Morse’s ideas were far ahead of the rest of the qualitative world. Her concern was not on the need for qualitative researchers to rationalize the uniqueness of their work through new terminology but to understand how verification strategies could be used to assure rigor in qualitative research. This approach presented an alternative conceptualization of rigor which supported principles of qualitative inquiry and the epistemological and ontological assumptions embedded in the research question that initially guide selection of design and data collection strategies but

Long-Term Care Health Care Aides’ Perceptions of Decision-Making Processes in Transferring Residents to Acute Care Services:

Most transfers of long-term care (LTC) facility residents to the emergency department (ED) via 911 calls are necessary. Avoidable transfers can have adverse effects including increased confusion and dehydration. Around 20% of transfers are perceived to be avoidable or unnecessary, yet decision making around transfers is complex and poorly understood. Using a qualitative-focused ethnographic approach, we examined 20 health care aides’ (HCAs) perceptions of decision processes leading to transfer using experiential interview data. Inductive analysis throughout iterative data collection and analysis illuminated how HCAs’ familiarity with residents make them vital in initiating care processes. Hierarchical reporting structures influenced HCAs’ perceptions of nurse responsiveness to their concerns about resident condition, which influenced communications related to transfers. Communication processes in LTC facilities and the value placed on HCA concerns are inconsistent. There is an urgent need to improve conceptualization of HCA roles and communication structures in LTCs.