Writing Usable Qualitative Health Research Findings

Abstract

Scholars in diverse health-related disciplines and specialty fields of practice routinely promote qualitative research as an essential component of intervention and implementation programs of research and of a comprehensive evidence base for practice. Remarkably little attention, however, has been paid to the most important element of qualitative studies--the findings in reports of those studies--and specifically to enhancing the accessibility and utilization value of these findings for diverse audiences of users. The findings in reports of qualitative health research are too often difficult to understand and even to find owing to the way they are presented. A basic strategy for enhancing the presentation of these findings is to translate them into thematic statements, which can then in turn be translated into the language of intervention and implementation. Writers of qualitative health research reports might consider these strategies better to showcase the significance and actionability of findings to a wider audience.

Theme development in qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis

“…[12,43] Therefore, the theme becomes the recurrent unifying idea that characterizes the experiences of participants by a holistic insight from the whole of data. [3,13,50] …”

“…Moreover, a considerable diversity and lack of details on the identification of theme in the literature has often compounded the issue of development of theme. [11,13,14] Therefore, questions surrounding the process of theme construction in qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis are addressed in this paper to help with an analytical clarification, and to increase rigour and acceptability of data analysis.…”

Impact of the 5As Team study on clinical practice in primary care obesity management: a qualitative study

“…A theme was defined as integrations of disparate pieces of data that were consistently present, linked numerous codes and were latent or manifest. 17 Three team members assessed all themes for agreement. The results were member-checked by participants at the evaluation sessions, with strong agreement.…”

Women's experiences of low back pain during pregnancy

“…The interviews were semi-structured with open questions to determine the impact of LBP on women's lives, the reasons why they either sought or did not seek treatment for their LBP, the types of treatment which were used and their satisfaction with the treatments. An inductive qualitative approach was selected to enable women to describe the impact of pregnancy related LBP and explain their (non)-treatment seeking rationales from their own perspectives [15].…”