Rigor: Balancing Importance and Urgency
Hello Qualitative Mind,
Currently in North America we are enjoying the last bit of summer before the academic year begins in September. With this in mind, I wanted to take this opportunity to update this blog post and talk to you about planning to set yourself up for success this fall. This {somewhat} slower season of summer is the perfect opportunity to reflect on what you would like your priorities to be as you enter this upcoming academic year.
Rebecca Doring, a friend and talented meditation/yoga teacher, recommended an episode of Brooke Castillo’s The Life School Podcast: Episode #28 How to Set Priorities to me and let me tell you, it was fabulous! It resonated with me for many personal reasons, and I invite you to listen to the podcast and share your thoughts about it with the Quali Q community.
In the episode, Brooke talks about life priorities in relation to importance vs. urgency. What she says there goes hand in hand with a quote by Ken Groen, “Urgent things shout, important things whisper. Listen to the whisper.” Although the podcast was about personal/life priorities, it made me think of research priorities, especially in relation to rigor in qualitative research. I firmly believe that thinking about rigor in qualitative health research is of the utmost importance, from design through writing; however, very often other things take priority, e.g., ethics application, participant recruitment, data collection then data analysis...Then, it’s time to publish your work, you need to describe rigor in your qualitative research, AND rigor becomes an afterthought when it should have been a priority early on.
I’m certainly not saying that ethics applications, participant recruitment and research activities are not important because we, as qualitative health researchers, know they are. What I am saying is that rigor requires forethought and planning, and it tends not to be prioritized until a reviewer asks how you ensured rigor. You need to think about how you will describe rigor in your research from the beginning, and what verification strategies will best align with your paradigm, methodology and methods. Some rigor strategies may be focused on you, as the researcher; while others may be focused on participants and writing.
The main idea I want you to take away from today’s post is that you need to schedule time to invest in being rigorous in your qualitative work. Whether that means tens minutes of journaling, a long talk/debrief with a trusted colleague every so often, and/or two days to work on notes for an audit trail will depend on your design, paradigm and methodology. But, that scheduled time for whatever you choose is important and should be prioritized. If you aren’t sure where to start, we have just updated our “12 Questions” resource and re-released it on our website! The aptly titled “12 Questions to Spark Reflexivity and Rigor in Qualitative Research” is available to download for free here.
Last but certainly not least, QRB (Qualitative Research Blueprint) is now being offered as a self-study course and is a great opportunity for you to prioritize what matters in your research.
Talk soon,
Maira
*This blog post was originally published on August 11, 2020 and was updated on August 9, 2021.