Qualitative Research During a Pandemic (Part 3)

Hello Qualitative Mind,

For many of us, it is week 4 of social isolation. Some things are becoming easier; other things, harder. I believe we often fluctuate between calm and nervous, grounded and anxious, present and distant…and it’s absolutely normal. If you like podcasts, I highly recommend listening to David Kessler and Brené Brown on Grief and Finding Meaning.

Now, let’s dive into part three of qualitative research during a pandemic. We will continue to discuss medium, i.e., moving your qualitative research online. I have seen so many excellent resources about online qualitative research on LinkedIn, and I want to emphasize here what I believe it is the key message behind resources I have seen and, truthfully, the blog post series I am offering too.

If you had a qualitative research project already designed; had submitted to your ethics board; or were in the beginning, middle or end of data collection, you will need to go back to the drawing board – even if briefly. What does this mean?

It means you will need to go back to designing and planning. When you designed and planned your qualitative research pre-pandemic, you chose certain qualitative methods with an objective or a set of objectives in mind (likely linked to your study’s overall purpose and research questions). You likely planned your sampling, recruitment and data collection with your objective(s) in mind.

Then COVID-19 happened…

Think about the alignment you (hopefully) tried to have between sampling, recruitment and data collection before, and NOW plan your qualitative research during a pandemic.

For example, you were going to conduct in-depth, one-on-one interviews with participants; the interviews were going to be audio recorded upon written consent, and then transcribed verbatim. So what areas are vital in moving your qualitative research online? Here are some guiding questions you can use:

-       What online tool/software, whether free or paid, will give me the opportunity to connect one-on-one with my participants in a safe, virtual space?

-       If my participants are staying home with their family, how will I make sure they have the privacy to safely answer my questions? If you’re researching sensitive topics, this is a big deal! I shared on a Facebook Live inside the now archived Quali Q for Qualitative Minds Group that it might be a good idea to discuss a “safe” word or phrase that the participants can use to signal they can no longer talk to you.  

-       How am I going to ask for participant consent? Will I send them an email prior to the online interview? Will they review everything and electronically sign the consent form or will I record an oral consent when we “meet” online?

-       You were going to audio record your interview and now you might even video record the whole thing. What does that mean for data management and analysis? How will I store the data on my personal computer at home? How will I analyze the video?

If you are rolling your eyes and thinking this is too much on top of everything else that is going on, you are correct. That’s where your mindset comes in. Take a deep breath and ask yourself, what is my first, next step?

It might be an online discussion with your supervisor, it might be a frank conversation with a community stakeholder who knows your participants’ realities better than you do, it might be requesting to talk to someone in your institution’s ethics board to learn more about what is acceptable (or not) in the current environment, it might be going to back a paper you read that had used online methods of data collection, etc.

No matter what, take one step at a time and keep moving forward at your own pace. Everyone is experiencing the pandemic in their own way, and hopefully offering more empathy to those trying to figure things out.

Stay well and talk soon (next time about Ethics Review Boards),

Maira