How a Relationship Built Rigor {Maxi and Christine, Part Two}

Hello Qualitative Mind,

If you haven’t read last week’s blog post, I highly recommend you do before you get going on this one.

When Maxi and Christine showed up as invited guests to my qualitative course in 2014, Maxi had a big reusable bag with her. She walked towards the front and dumped the contents of the bag on a nearby table. A number (I don’t remember how many but I can surely say many) of journals fell out onto the table. Those journals included all her PhD notes, memos, description of categories, reflection, etc.

My jaw dropped and for a second all I could think was, “I’ll never be able to do this.”

The reality is that I indeed didn’t write more than one journal during my PhD {because at that point, I thought that writing that much wasn’t for me or wasn’t who I was}. Now I see that thought as a limiting belief, something that I internalized about myself without trying to change it. But enough about me. Let me continue inspiring you through the story of Christine and Maxi…

Maxi, throughout her relationship with Christine and growth as a qualitative researcher, decided that she wanted her PhD to be a “strong piece of work, to influence practice and education.” As such, she built rigor and excellence into her work. Her thesis included a number of pages with notes and data analysis that had been audited. Yes, she did an audit trail. It was the type of qualitative research that knocks the ball out of the park by miles. And here is what Maxi said when I asked about the relationship between having Christine in her life and rigor:

“Without this relationship [with Christine], my PhD wouldn't have turned out the way it did. I would say it was a strong piece of work. It's influenced practice, it's influenced education in my field. And so I would say that, I can't imagine it being that without the relationship, because there was so much conversation and so much, you know, work that we did together in peer debriefing. And, you know what that opened up for us? My work wouldn't have been the same, it wouldn't have been the same at all. It wouldn't have been as strong.” (Maxi)

Christine added, “Without having that sounding board, or those exchanges, I'm not sure that I would have reached that level of contemplation, that level of richness, because I wouldn’t have had somebody pushing me.”

Relationships enable rigor in qualitative research; presenting tentative ideas to others, being forced to explain assumptions and emerging theories to others. These two blog posts, with the amazing duo of Maxi and Christine, were planned to light a fire in you to build and seek your own qualitative community.

Now more than ever we need people who can help us to contemplate, to be ingenious, to add novelty and nuance to qualitative writing. We need relationships that will empower us as qualitative researchers.

Talk soon,

Maira