Dependability
One of the four principles of quality criteria for qualitative research including credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability.
Stability of findings over time.
Also deals with consistency.
E.g. internal by looking at participants views of the findings to ensure participants support the findings.
E.g. external – is what you have done in line with what is accepted for that kind of study?
The main strategy of ensuring dependability is auditing research processes and analysis.
Similar to reliability in quantitative research.
Confirmability
One of the four principles of quality criteria for qualitative research including credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability.
Deals with neutrality and trying to maximise ‘inter subjectivity’ i.e. degree to which study findings can be confirmed by other researchers.
Idea of ensuring the findings arise from the data and not simply the researchers thoughts or opinions.
The main strategy of ensuring confirmability is auditing research processes and analysis.
Coding- Coding is the process of labelling and organising your qualitative data to identify different themes and the relationships between them.
Analysing text can occur in many ways. A starting point is to usually define categories for analysis. The data is then coded using these categories. These categories may be preset by the researcher or generated after reading the text, or both. The coding categories should capture the content of the text.
Inter-rater reliability– The degree of agreement amongst the researchers. A number of researchers will conduct the coding process, and the degree of agreement acts as a test of reliability of the content analysis as a whole.
Kappa statistic– a widely accepted measure of inter-rater reliability. This generates a singly figure number between 0-1 which indicates the degree to which two coders have made the same coding decisions. 0=poor agreement 1=perfect agreement
Refinement until an acceptable kappa statistic is produced is one way in which content analysis can proceed.
Transferability:
Transferability is one of the quality criteria for qualitative research. It concerns itself with applicability. It refers to the degree the results of a paper can be transferable to the reader settings. This is defined as the transferability judgement.
The researcher facilitates this with a thick description.
Thick Description:
Thick description is a term used to characterize the process of paying attention to contextual detail in observing and interpreting social meaning when conducting qualitative research
Qualitative research methods:
1.Interviews:
Definition: Individual interviews are probably the most familiar and the most often used form of data collection in qualitative medical education research. Interviews provide access to participants’ personal perspectives and relevant experiences on a number of topics. The qualitative interview typically goes ‘in‐depth’ to provide a rich and detailed exploration of a research topic and generally lasts between 45 minutes and a few hours. Interviewer is there to listen, to observe with sensitivity, and to encourage the participant to respond
Types: semi‐structured; unstructured; informal
When to use?
- When you want in‐depth exploration of a particular topic
- When you want a flexible, iterative, responsive approach
- When you want to access participants’ understandings, attitudes, perceptions
Consideration:
- Power differentials between interviewer and participant
- Costly (interviewer time, transcription etc.)
- Skill‐level of interviewer
- Focus group:
Definition: Focus groups are sessions involving 4–12 participants and a moderator or facilitator who guides the group discussion of a topic relevant to the research question. Focus groups provide access to multiple stories and diverse experiences in an efficient manner. But they are not merely group interviews. Instead, focus groups provide a dynamic and socially interactive exchange among participants that can stimulate exploration of contrary opinions, reflection on group norms and common practices, and exposure of taken‐for‐granted values.
Consideration:
- Challenging to moderate
- Biases
3.Observation
Definition: Observation of study participants as they go about their regular activities can provide powerful insights into social processes. Researchers conducting observations have access to data on what participants do and not just on what they recall or say they do. Qualitative researchers conducting observations make jottings in the field, which become more elaborated records called ‘field notes’. Field notes can be structured to capture details such as the content of conversations, the context of discussions, the participants and intended audience for relevant comments, and the nonverbal nuances that accompany these interchanges. Observations are sometimes accompanied by audio recording of ‘naturalistic’ conversations, which are later transcribed for analysis. While time‐consuming, this method may offer useful knowledge that other forms of observation and interviewing may not, including a sense of fatigue of a participant, insights triggered by environmental cues, and geographical and spatial features.
When to use?
- When you want to capture behaviours and actions
- When you want to study the cultural and relational aspects of social phenomena
- When you want to build a thick description of a particular context
4.Extant texts and visuals
Definition: Texts and visuals are gathered to understand how a social construct or institutional practice is represented and shaped.
Sources of text include course curricula, assignments and examinations, student and faculty evaluations, clinical notes, and policy documents. More recently, texts from websites, email correspondence, and even digital images and video.
Difficulties: time period and accessibility.
- Elicited/generated texts and visuals
Definition: Texts and visuals are created by participants and/or researcher when you need to know the understandings or representations of experiences, phenomena or processes and elicit different insights.
Examples include written reflections, photographs, drawings.
Triangulation
Using different data sourced, investigators and methods for data collection.
Data triangulation – using multiple data sources in time, space and person
Investigator triangulation using 2 or more researchers to make coding, analysis and interpretation decisions
Method triangulation – using multiple methods of data collection
Member checking – checking findings with research participants (also known as respondent validation) is a technique for exploring the credibility of results. Results are returned to participants to see whether is resonates with their experience. It strengthens the data especially because researcher and respondents look at the data with different perspectives.
Both triangulation and member checking are strategies to ensure credibility in qualitative research.