Blog

I’ve been teaching a qualitative methods lecture at the University of Alberta around October for a few years, and one of the things I like about it is that students often follow up with super interesting questions after the class.

In one of the emails I got this year, the student was asking for advice on a few aspects of their project, and in the back and forth of emails I had a chance to encourage them to step into the role of facilitator for the first time. We always start somewhere and being a beginner means the learning curve is steep but not impossible to conquer. Being a novice interviewer or focus group facilitator means findings one’s own interview pace and style…

In all spheres of life, we look for opportunities to build meaningful relationships and collaborations. After all, it’s one of the ways we can grow personally and professionally. In a recent meeting with one of my Coaching and Mentoring clients, we were talking about the details of a collaboration she (my client) recently said yes to and how she had become part of a diverse research team with different interests.

When she asked my opinion on the research process the team was undertaking, I reiterated many aspects of the blog post I wrote following Dr. Maria Mayan’s guest talk with Qualitative Research Blueprint students back in April 2021. If you have yet to read this post (and absorb Maria’s wisdom), don’t miss it today!

I have the impression that covid has added not one but many elephants in most rooms around the globe. The list is long and probably familiar to most of you and include topics like masks, vaccines, social gatherings, physical health, emotional health, travelling, etc. As much as I think these topics might overlap with (and influence) qualitative research projects, they aren’t the topic of today’s blog post. Today we will be discussing two elephants that affect qualitative researchers- one starts with an “e” and the other is green!

Back when we wrapped up the first QRB course on December 1st, 2020, I started reflecting on everything that I had heard from QRB members during live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching calls and over email, and thinking how a big part of my work and passion lies in supporting qualitative researchers to fulfill their potential. That’s when the idea of the Realize Path© started to form in my brain. You can read more about the Realize Path© and it’s four pillars in this blog post. We now offer a bonus inside of QRB called Maximizing QRB: The Realize Path© that is based on those four pillars.

As qualitative researchers, we commonly struggle with the length of our manuscripts (i.e., word count). During one of the Qualitative Research Blueprint (QRB) chats in 2021, a course member asked me to share strategies to decrease the length of a qualitative manuscript, especially when all participants’ quotes seem super relevant. In her case, the struggle resulted in a 7000-word manuscript that would need to be shortened by half!

I shared with her the three main strategies I use to decrease the word count of qualitative manuscripts. So here they are…

The inspiration for today’s blog post is a methodological paper by Braun and Clarke (2020), “Can I use TA? Should I use TA? Should I not use TA? Comparing reflexive thematic analysis and other pattern-based qualitative analytic approaches.” The paper is a must-read if you’re going through data analysis and struggling to write about the process you’re following. I know I learned new things there that will help me name the things I do; and it triggered the thoughts I’m sharing here today…

I was recently reviewing a former mentee’s manuscript and made the following comment on the document, “You did content analysis and often use the word ‘theme’ in your methods and results. FYI…it’s possible reviewers will question your approach to data analysis, and that’s okay. We can work on a response and some references to back it up.”

And I meant it. We could work on a response without removing every single mention of “themes” in the manuscript. Today we’ll talk about how coding and theming might be interpreted, and where the confusion between the two terms start.

I know, I know…we’re not supposed to use acronyms in titles, and PBOD might not ring a bell for you. But, I wanted to catch your attention {and hopefully I did}! What’s a PBOD? This acronym came from a virtual event I attended {in my role as a volunteer board member of Emerging Health Leaders (EHL) Edmonton} with guest speaker Feisal Keshavjee. Feisal’s talk was Great Leaders Great Outcomes, and he started by introducing the LEADS framework as one that can support the development of leadership competencies among leaders in healthcare and beyond…

I teach qualitative methods to senior undergraduate nutrition students as a guest lecturer, and this year something special happened. I received a follow-up email from one of the students with a series of questions that I’ll be covering here over the course of the next two months...yes, it was that intense! In the email, the student asked how they would know the authors of a qualitative study did what they were describing in the paper, i.e., thematic vs. content analysis. Isn’t this an intriguing question?