Blog

Are you familiar with the concept of “thick description” in qualitative research? Do you ever wonder where it came from and how it became so popular among qualitative researchers? I’ve always understood “thick description” as qualitative findings (i.e., results) that have substantiated details about participants and their contexts, circumstances, cultures, etc., allowing us as readers to walk with them in their experience. I’ve also perceived “thick description” as a positive consequence of qualitative research that is well-designed and implemented. What I didn’t know…

Last year, when we launched QRB for the first time, I shared that underestimating the cost of qualitative research could be a mistake that leads to unpublishable qualitative health research. How that would happen is what we discuss in this blog post. Sometimes (note that I’m not saying always) as we’re starting to embrace qualitative research and methods, we think it’s easy and simple to do. At first, we might not fully grasp that in qualitative health research, people are the greatest asset we have. It's people's time and that costs money.

This week, we are honored to welcome Kallia O. Wright, Associate Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Illinois College in the United States, to the Quali Q blog. Kallia discusses how as a qualitative researcher, she is a conduit for her participants {who often remark how happy they are to just share their stories}. But sometimes, she feels she is losing their narratives because she can’t quite figure out what is going on in the data. So in this post, she offers suggestions for how to move that mountain in the data analysis experience…

Last week I mentioned in the blog post that I’d continue building on a conversation about academic publishing triggered by Episode #48 of Cathy Mazak’s podcast- Academic Womxn Amplified. So, here I am! This week’s focus is on how to respond to reviewers’ comments when publishing qualitative health research.

My decision and journey to build an online business parallel to, yet outside of, academia felt lonely at first. It’s not a common career path post PhD, and when I first started Quali Q I didn’t know any other online entrepreneurs who had successfully done it. That started to change when I met Dr. Cathy Mazak through a prospective client and colleague. Cathy coaches womxn from all areas of research and, for that reason, her comments and suggestions weren’t focused on publishing qualitative health research. That’s where I got the idea to build on a couple of the questions she answered, and write two blog posts about publishing qualitative health research. Today’s blog post will be about choosing a journal for your qualitative work, and next week’s will focus on how to respond to reviewers’ comments.

I wrote about “Boosting Your Qualitative Research Title” a while ago, and the points I raised there are invaluable. The reason why I’m revisiting that blog post is because, to this date, it’s the most visited one on the Quali Q blog. Recently someone asked me why I thought that was the case. Well, it just so happens that I have a few possible explanations and I think you might find them interesting...

You might be here for a while now and know that I’m passionate about disseminating qualitative health research through various means that include but are not limited to academic publications. In my opinion, investing in qualitative health research when developing videos, info graphics, social media posts for knowledge translation and patient engagement means putting humanity back in health research. This is something I’m passionate about and one of the Quali Q banners.