Qualitative methodologies I: asking research questions with reflexive insight

Abstract

The purpose of this paper, the first of a series of two discussion pieces, is to introduce some of the issues in the debate surrounding qualitative research to the readers of Musculoskeletal Care. Recent issues of the Journal have seen an informative focus on quantitative methods and statistical analysis, and here we provide an equivalent introduction to semi-structured interviewing and qualitative analysis in this series. In the qualitative tradition, we have tried to keep our discussion reflexive, transparent and contextualized within the history of the approach and the theoretical considerations that underlie it, including the origins, nature, methods and limits of the approach. We provide information that we hope is useful for readers with all levels of familiarity with qualitative research, building from an introduction to some basic assumptions and ethical issues. We also introduce one specific qualitative approach, interpretative phenomenological analysis, which researchers might wish to apply. In the accompanying paper in a subsequent issue of Musculoskeletal Care, we will describe the potential application of this approach.

Examining the public policy perspective of CSR implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…According to Hale et al (2007), qualitative research is particularly appropriate when you want to understand or obtain an account of a personal perspective of an event or experience.…”

The Perceptions of Slovak Physiotherapists of their Practice Placement Experience

“…Its purpose is detailed examination of human lived experience, expressed in its own terms (Smith et al 2009). Therefore, this approach tends to interpret studied perceptions of practice placements, using a combination of participant description and personal interpretation which is further interpreted by the researcher (Hale et al 2007).…”

Qualitative methodologies II: a brief guide to applying interpretative phenomenological analysis in musculoskeletal care

“…It is probably wise to keep a log of your own feelings and assumptions as part of your fi eld notes, so that you can constantly question your analysis. This is the step back that some people refer to as 'bracketing', as we debated in our accompanying paper in a previous issue of Musculoskeletal Care (Hale et al, 2007).…”

“…However, triangulation should not be confused with 'mixed-methods', where both quantitative and qualitative approaches appear together (Morse, 2005). Indeed, one could argue that qualitative and quantitative approaches are so epistemologically distinct that they should not appear in a single project together, although this perhaps depends on the distinction between a project and a larger programme of research on one topic, and takes us full circle back to the argument at the start of our accompanying paper (Hale et al, 2007), that the most appropriate method should be used to address each specifi c research question.…”

“…We have outlined some specifi cs of one such method, IPA (Smith, 1996(Smith, , 2004Smith et al, 1999), together with a consideration of some of the assumptions that go with this (selected other qualitative methods; Hale et al, 2007) and what researchers can expect to achieve by using this approach. Research methodology in musculoskeletal care is ripe for development, and we hope that by considering the issues discussed in these articles, researchers in this fi eld will be able to make it so.…”