Margarete Sandelowski

Whatever happened to qualitative description

The general view of descriptive research as a lower level form of inquiry has influenced some researchers conducting qualitative research to claim methods they are really not using and not to claim the method they are using: namely, qualitative description. Qualitative descriptive studies have as their goal a comprehensive summary of events in the everyday terms of those events. Researchers conducting qualitative descriptive studies stay close to their data and to the surface of words and events. Qualitative descriptive designs typically are an eclectic but reasonable combination of sampling, and data collection, analysis, and re-presentation techniques. Qualitative descriptive study is the method of choice when straight descriptions of phenomena are desired.

The problem of rigor in qualitative research.

There are few explicit discussions in nursing literature of how qualitative research can be made as rigorous as it is relevant to the perspective and goals of nursing. Four factors complicate the debate about the scientific merits of qualitative research: the varieties of qualitative methods, the lack of clear boundaries between quantitative and qualitative research, the tendency to evaluate qualitative research against conventional scientific criteria of rigor, and the artistic features of qualitative inquiry. A framework for understanding the similarities and differences in research approaches and a summary of strategies to achieve rigor in qualitative research are presented.

Rigor or rigor mortis: the problem of rigor in qualitative research revisited.

Issues are raised by the persistent concern with achieving rigor in qualitative research, including the rigidity that often characterizes the search for validity in qualitative work and the threat to validity that the search for reliability may pose. Member validation is highlighted as a technique that exemplifies not only the practical, but also the profoundly theoretical, representational, and even moral problems raised by all procedures aimed at ensuring the trustworthiness of qualitative work.

Qualitative metasynthesis: Issues and techniques

There has been an accumulation of qualitative studies in recent years, but little cumulation of the understandings gained from them. Qualitative research appears endangered both by efforts to synthesize studies and by the failure to do so. Techniques used have included reciprocal translations of key metaphors and concepts and qualitative and quantitative comparative analyses to produce narrative and theoretical integrations. The major problem yet to be resolved is developing usable and communicable systematic approaches to conducting metasynthesis projects that maintain the integrity of individual studies.

Classifying the Findings in Qualitative Studies

A key task in conducting research integration studies is determining what features to account for in the research reports eligible for inclusion. In the course of a methodological project, the authors found a remarkable uniformity in the way findings were produced and presented, no matter what the stated or implied frame of reference or method. They describe a typology of findings, which they developed to bypass the discrepancy between method claims and the actual use of methods, and efforts to ascertain its utility and reliability. The authors propose that the findings in journal reports of qualitative studies in the health domain can be classified on a continuum of data transformation as no finding, topical survey, thematic survey, conceptual/thematic description, or interpretive explanation.

Qualitative Metasynthesis: Reflections on Methodological Orientation and Ideological Agenda:

In an era of pressure toward evidence-based health care, we are witnessing a new enthusiasm for qualitative metasynthesis as an enterprise distinct from conventional literature reviews, secondary analyses, and the many other scholarly endeavors with which it is sometimes confused. This article represents the reflections of five scholars, each ofwhom has authored a distinct qualitative metasynthesis strategy. By providing the reader a glimpse into the tradition of their various qualitative metasynthesis projects, these authors offer a finely nuanced examination of the tensions between comparison and integration, deconstruction and synthesis, and reporting and integration within the metasynthesis endeavor. In so doing, they account for many of the current confusions about representation and generalization within the products of these inquiries. Through understanding the bases of their unique angles of vision, the reader is invited to engage in their commitment to scholarly integrity and intellectual credibility in this emerging methodological challenge.

Using Qualitative Research

A renewed urgency has emerged in the qualitative health research community concerning the utility of qualitative research. This urgency is the result of several converging trends in health care research, including the elevation of practical over basic knowledge, proliferation of qualitative health research studies, and the rise of evidence-based practice as a paradigm and methodology for health care. Diverse conceptualizations of use and users exist, and these have different implications for understanding, demonstrating, and enhancing the utility of qualitative research findings. Issues affecting the utilization of these findings include the varied ways in which they are conceived, presented, synthesized, signified, and translated, and the complex repertoire of skills required to activate the knowledge transformation cycle in qualitative health research fully.

Reading Qualitative Studies

In this article, the authors hope to shift the debate in the practice disciplines concerning quality in qualitative research from a preoccupation with epistemic criteria toward consideration of aesthetic and rhetorical concerns. They see epistemic criteria as inevitably including aesthetic and rhetorical concerns. The authors argue here for a reconceptualization of the research report as a literary technology that mediates between researcher/writer and reviewer/reader. The evaluation of these reports should thus be treated as occasions in which readers seek to make texts meaningful, rather than for the rigid application of standards and criteria. The authors draw from reader-response theories, literature on rhetoric and representation in science, and findings from an on-going methodological research project involving the appraisal of a set of qualitative studies.

Focus on qualitative methods interviewing children

The focus in health-related research on children has shifted from seeking information about children to seeking information directly from them. Children, even as young as three years old, can give graphic descriptions and have excellent recall of experiences related to adverse events, such as illness and hospitalization. Children use scripts as the primary means of anticipating, comprehending, and re-creating real-life experience. The content, timing, number, and structure of interviews will influence the completeness, accuracy, and consistency of childrens recall of events. Although at times conflicting, the findings from recent scholarship on childrens narrative competence will assist researchers to select the interviewing strategies most likely to yield faithful representations of experience.

The Challenges of Searching for and Retrieving Qualitative Studies

The authors’ purpose in this article is to report the results of their search and retrieval efforts to date in an ongoing study to develop the procedural, analytic, and interpretive techniques to conduct qualitative meta-synthesis projects, using studies on women with HIV infection as the method case. For researchers conducting qualitative meta-synthesis projects, the ideal goal is to retrieve all of the relevant studies in a field—not simply a sample of them. Bates’s model of berrypicking is used as the framework to describe the techniques used to conduct these searches. The authors discuss, in particular, the challenges of working with bibliographic databases, including choosing which databases to search, learning about the idiosyncrasies of working with each database, developing a list of search terms, and refining inclusion criteria regarding which studies to include in the meta-synthesis. Recommendations are given for searchers and writers of qualitative research.