NURS 360- Exam 2- Appraising trustworthiness and integrity in qualitative research & understanding the analysis of qualitative data

there is an argument that qualitative researchers should return to the terminology of:

the social sciences

an appropriate quality criterion in both qualitative and quantitive studies, but they use different methods to achieve it

validity

Suggested four criteria for enhancing the trustworthiness of a qualitative inquiry:

credibility, dependability, confirmability, and transferability.

Lincoln and Cuba’s key goal:

trustworthiness

credibility

• refers to confidence in the truth value of the data and interpretations of them

five criteria

• Credibility

• Dependability

• Confirmability

• Transferability

• Authenticity

Lincoln and Guba state credibility involves two aspects:

• arrying out the study in a way that enhances the believability of the findings

• Taking steps to demonstrate credibility to external readers.

Qualitative researchers must strive to:

establish confidence in the truth of the findings.

The dependability question:

Would the study findings be repeated if the inquiry were replicated with the same (or similar) participants in the same (or similar) context?

Credibility cannot be attained in the absence of:

dependability

confirmability

• Refers to objectivity

  • the potential for congruence between two or more independent people about the data’s accuracy, relevance, or meaning.

confirmability is achieved if:

 the findings must reflect the participants’ voice and the conditions of the inquiry, and not the researcher’s biases.

transferability

• Analogous to generalizability

• The extent to which qualitative findings have applicability in other settings or groups

authenticity

• Conveys the feeling tone of participants’ lives as they are lived

• Sense of the mood, experience, language, and context of those lives

A text has authenticity if:

• it invites readers into a vicarious experience of the lives being described and enables readers to develop a heightened sensitivity to the issues being depicted

quantitative research does not have:

analog

Consumers can assess quality-enhancement efforts by:

looking for these and assessing their success in strengthening integrity, validity, and/or trustworthiness.

Prolonged engagement:

investing sufficient time to have in-depth understanding

Persistent observation:

intensive focus on salience of data being gathered

Reflexivity strategies:

attending to researcher’s effect on data

member checking:

• providing feedback to participants about emerging interpretations and obtaining their reactions

  • Controversial— some consider it essential while others do not

triangulation

• the use of multiple referents to draw conclusions about what constitutes truth

data triangulation

• the use of multiple data sources for the purpose of validating conclusions

  • Time triangulation

  • Space triangulation

method triangulation

• the use of multiple methods of data collection to study the same phenomenon

negative case analysis

• a specific search for cases that appear to discredit earlier hypotheses

peer review and debriefing

• sessions with peers designed to get critical feedback

inquiry audit

• a formal scrutiny of the data and relevant supporting documents and decisions by an external reviewer

thick and contextualized description

• vivid portrayal of study participants, their context, and the phenomenon under study

researcher credibility

• enhancing confidence by sharing relevant aspects of the researcher’s experience, credentials, and motivation

Interpretation in qualitative inquiry (making meaning from the data) relies on adequate incubation.

• The process of living the data

Similar interpretive issues as in quantitative research

• credibility, meaning, importance, transferability, and implications

qualitative data management and organization

• Developing a coding scheme

• Coding qualitative data

• Organizing the data

  • Manual methods of organization (conceptual files)

  • Computerized methods of organization using CAQDAS

Descriptive coding

• uses mainly nouns as codes and is often used by beginning qualitative researchers; does not provide much insight into meaning

example of descriptive coding

• Excerpt: “The other day, we ran out of everything and we had to go to a church and get food.”

• Code: food pantry use

Process coding

• often involves using gerunds as codes to connote action and observable activity in the data.

example of process coding

• Excerpt: “The other day, we ran out of everything and we had to go to a church and get food”

• Code: dealing with food shortages

concept coding

• involves using a word or phrase to represent symbolically a broad meaning beyond observable facts or behaviors; the codes are usually nouns or gerunds.

in vivo coding

• involves using participant-generated words and phrases; it is used as initial coding in many grounded theory studies.

example of concept coding

• Excerpt: “The other day, we ran out of everything and we had to go to a church and get food.”

• Code: coping with the risk of hunger

example of in vivo coding

• Excerpt: “The other day, we ran out of everything and we had to go to a church and get food.”

• Codes: ran out of everything; had to go to a church for food

holistic coding

• involves using codes to grasp broad ideas in large “chunks” of data rather than coding smaller segments.

example of holistic coding

• Excerpt: “I buy on deals. I learned how to, you know, what to buy and what not to buy. Where to shop, where to look for sales. I’ll go to all the stores. And I clip coupons from the paper and stuff. But sometimes that’s not enough. The other day, we ran out of everything and we had to go to a church and get food.”

• Code: food management strategies

Once a coding scheme has been developed:

the data are read in their entirety and coded for correspondence to the categories.

• Researchers may have to modify the initial coding scheme

• New ideas for new codes

• Must reread all previously coded material to see if need to apply new code

One paragraph may contain _____ different codes

3 or 4

first step of analytic procedure

• identify broad categories

  • Clusters of codes that are connected conceptually

  • Ex: “I feel like I failed my patient” and “I let my patient down” can be clustered together to form a category

second step of analytic procedure

• identify themes

  • A theme is “an abstract entity that brings meaning and identity to a current experience and its variant manifestations”

  • Themes are never universal

  • How are they patterned?

final analysis stage

• researchers weave the thematic pieces into an integrated whole

  • Provide an overall structure to the data

metaphors as an analytic strategy

• A symbolic comparison, using figurative language to evoke a visual analogy

meaning units

• the smallest segment of a text that contains a recognizable piece of information

manifest content

• what the text actually says

latent content

• interpretation of meaning

thematic analysis is:

• an accessible and theoretically flexible approach to analyzing qualitative data”

• Seen as a foundational method for qual. analysis

• Step-by-step guide with six phases

ethnographic analysis

• Ethnographers are continually looking for patterns in the behavior and thoughts of participants, comparing one pattern against another

• Use of maps, flowcharts, organizational charts, matrices (two-dimensional displays) can help to highlight a comparison graphically and to discover emerging patterns.

4 levels of data analysis- spradley’s method

• domain analysis

• taxonomic analysis

• componential analysis

• theme analysis

Three broad schools of phenomenology

Duquesne, Utrecht, Heideggerian

Duquesne School

(descriptive phenomenology)

Utrecht School

(descriptive and interpretive phenomenology)

Heideggerian hermeneutics

(interpretive)

Benner’s hermeneutic analysis

• Search for paradigm cases

• Thematic analysis

• Analysis of exemplars

Substantive codes

• Open codes—ends when core category is identified

  • Level I (in vivo) codes, level II codes, level III codes

• One type of core category is a basic social process (BSP).

• Selective codes—codes relating to core category only

• Theoretical codes

process

• stages, phases, passages, transitions

strategy

• tactics, techniques, maneuverings

cutting point

• boundaries, turning points

the 6 C’s

• causes, contexts, conditions, contingencies, consequences, and covariances

3 types of coding

• Open coding

• Axial coding

• Selective coding

  • Deciding on the central (or core) category

initial coding

• Data are studied to learn what participants view as problematic.

focused coding

• Identify most significant initial code and then theoretically code.