WRITING

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH REPORT

GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR WRITING QUALITATIVE REPORTS General It is important to recognise that qualitative and quantitative research methods are based on very different assumptions for approaching and looking at particular issues in psychology. Which you use depends on the question(s) you want to investigate. Qualitative research recognises the importance of the social, cultural and historical context in which the research takes place. The language used in your report should be appropriate for qualitative methodology (i.e., avoid words like experimenter and subject; refer to yourself as a researcher or co-researcher and your interviewee as a participant). You may write in the first person (e.g., I) but be careful to ensure that you do not lapse into unsubstantiated assertion, that you make it very clear as to who you are, that your assumptions and position are clearly stated, and that any preexisting relationships with participants are clarified. Generally speaking, a qualitative research report follows a similar format to an experimental lab report. They both contain a title, abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, reference section, and appendices. However, there are also a number of important differences in addition which are indicated below. In order to demonstrate many of the below points excerpts have been included from recent research papers conducted by Craig Murray. This research involved interviewing amputees about their experiences of prosthesis use, using both face-to-face and e-mail interviews. A documentary analysis was also carried out on archived e-mail posts on publicly available web pages or listservs. Introduction This should include a statement and justification of your research question. You should discuss why your research has used qualitative methodology (i.e., describe the approach you are using and why it is the most appropriate method for your answering your research question). However, your introduction should not become a justification or rationale for qualitative methods per se. You need to show how your present study is related to previous studies and previously identified phenomena. A substantive but relevant literature review is, therefore, required. You should clarify whether your study is guided by a theoretical position or is exploratory or descriptive. This will enable you to acknowledge a sources of bias within your research. Outline the most important characteristics of the approach you have used (e.g., case study approach, idiographic, phenomenological, naturalistic inquiry, inductive analysis, active participation, etc). The reader should, by the end of this section, have a very clear idea of what you are intending to do, why you are doing it, how you are doing it and why you have chosen this particular way to investigate it. Methodology The methodology section of a qualitative report might contain the following subheadings: Rationale and Approach Study design Interviews Participants Ethical Issues Interview Procedures Transcription of interviews Data Analysis

Reliability and Validity Rationale and Approach You need to say something here about how the nature of inquiry meant that the study design should be of a particular style/nature. What implications does this have for who your participants should be and what the research issues should be? Study design You need to say here something about how the requirement to use your particular project sample, in which they are treated as experts upon their own experiences, necessitates a qualitative approach which would allow access to people's own experiences. What particular method(s) will be used (e.g. openended and semi-structured interviews)? Why? Interviews If interviews are going to be used, you need to say something about what interviews actually are. For instance: the qualitative interview is not prescriptive, with an exhaustive list of pre-conceived questions. Rather, such an interview is responsive to the interviewee. While an interview protocol, a list of suggested areas of discussion derived partly from a previous research material and preceding interviews, is necessary, they should not dictate the direction of the interview. The participant leads the way in the interview, while the interviewer carefully crafts questions grounded in the participant's discourse. Participants You will need to give a rationale for the selection of your sample. This might be an subheading which precedes your participants section called something like Sampling isssues. Following this, information about your sample, or your participants, needs to be given. Who will/are your participants going to be? What characteristics do your participants have (e.g. age, gender, and particular characteristic which are important to your project, e.g. occupation, etc.) For instance, in recent research conducted by Craig Murray, the participant section read: In order to obtain participants for FTF interviews, I made contact with the Withington Disablement Services Centre (DSC). The DSC provides services for over 2,500 artificial limb users in the Greater Manchester Area, with a further 600 from outside the region. Each year over 800 lower limbs, and over 300 upper limbs, are issued. Before the centre could provide contact with potential participants my research had to be approved by the South Manchester Ethics Committee (see appendix i for ethics application form). Following this, the centre acted as a contact to potential participants, by sending out letters of introduction (see appendix ii). The obtainment of participants for the FTF sample was in part purposive and due to availability. Potential participants were contacted on the basis of two criteria for being involved in the project: active users/wearers of prosthetics; and adults. Letters of introduction were mailed to 40 people varying along such dimensions as age, sex, whether they wore a prosthetic due to an amputation or congenital limb absence, whether their missing/absent limb was upper or lower limb, and the type of prosthetic used. As a result of this first wave of letters I interviewed 8 people. A second wave of letters was sent out by the DSC, in my name, to people who they believed would be willing to help in such a research project. As a result of this second contact I interviewed a further 6 people.

In total, I interviewed fourteen participants face-to-face (FTF). Three of these were male, eleven female. Nine participants had limb loss: three of these were male, six were female. Eight of these were amputations of a lower limb, with one amputation of the left arm, below the elbow. Five of the interviewees had congenital limb absence, four of whom were female. Three of these participants had absence below the level of the elbow (one right, two left), one had absence above the elbow (right). The fifth participant had a left fore-shortened lower limb. The ages of these participants ranged from 18 - 75. Ethical Issues An important aspect of qualitative research is a special consideration to ethical issues. In this section you should describe the ethical considerations of relevance to your study. The following set of ethical guidelines are taken from a research study. The headings can serve as a skeletal structure for you to complete with regards to your own research study. In order to gain access to a face-to-face (FTF) sample of prosthesis users, it was first necessary to obtain the approval of the South Manchester Ethics Committee (SMEC). In addition, the British Psychological Society's (BPS) ethical guidelines (1993) formed the background through which the research was conducted, and through which ethical issues were evaluated. However, ethical decision making was a situated, continual process. The primary issues informing and arising from the research are presented below. These are: informed consent; privacy, anonymity and confidentiality; protection from harm; debriefing; and interpretation and ownership of material. Informed consent: All interview participants were informed of what the study was about, and what their involvement would entail. They were also given an indication of what would happen to the data, including its potential use in any reports or publications. I found that e-mail research in particular needs to be mindful of consent because the 'usual' indicators of a participant's (un)willingness to continue may be absent. During FTF interviews the experienced researcher is acutely aware when conversation touches on difficult areas. Non verbal communication cues indicate when people become nervous, hostile or withdrawn. The lack of non-verbal cues in computer-mediated communication (CMC) make it easy for the researcher to continue with a line of questioning which is unwelcomed by participants. Therefore, I sought reassurance from the interviewee to continue throughout the interview process. In the present research, I sought consent before interviews proceeded, and at regular intervals throughout e-mail interviews. This accords with the BPS (1993) guidelines, which stress that consent needs to be obtained on more than one occasion during longitudinal research (see Murray and Sixsmith 1998 for a more protracted discussion). With observational research, it has been traditionally accepted that behaviour which is performed within the public domain may be observed and researched without consent (BPS 1993). It is in this sense that research using e-mail posts and archives can be considered. Posts to e-mail forums may be recorded by the researcher and stored without consent, so long as they are deemed to exist in the public domain. However, this issue is highly contentious (King 1996; Garton et al. 1997; Murray and Sixsmith in press; Sixsmith and Murray (b) in press). In the present research, I achieved negotiated consent, but this somewhat problematic. List moderators were made aware of the my presence and purpose, and a notice was posted to the group at the outset of the research. However, any old subscribers who had left the group (but had left archived posts) or new subscribers to the

group during the research period may not have been alerted to my presence unless they read through the group archives. Privacy, anonymity and confidentiality: It is the responsibility of researchers to protect the privacy of individual participants. In the present research interview participants were not (intentionally) pressured to reveal private or personal details. The BPS (1995; see also BPS 1993) Code of Conduct states that 'reasonable steps' should be taken to preserve the confidentiality of information obtained from research participants. Care should be taken not to reveal the identity of individuals implicated in research without their permission (see Data Protection Act 1984). Within the present research any potentially identifying information was removed. All actual names, e-mail addresses, and identifying events and places (including bulletin boards and other computer sites) have been removed from the presented data. Protection from harm: Social researchers have an ethical obligation to protect participants from harm. This involves ensuring that research participants are not exposed to greater mental or physical harm than they would encounter in the course of their everyday activities. However, it was difficult to know in advance which issues had the potential to cause harm. Participants were informed prior to the interview that they were not required to answer any questions that they felt uncomfortable discussing. Additionally, sensitive topics were broached cautiously to give participants as much opportunity as possible to avoid disclosing information which would prove upsetting. Some topics were discussed with participants that proved distressing to them. However, these participants appeared relieved to be able to talk about these matters. Debriefing: The completion of a data collection process includes a debriefing of all participants. This was problematic for e-mail interviews. In contrast to FTF interviews, it was not always obvious when an e-mail interview had reached its conclusion. Whereas FTF interviews were structured by an agreed time frame, the e-mail interviews proceeded mainly according to whether particular issues had been thoroughly covered. In the present research contact between myself and e-mail interviewees was left 'open' in order to allow participants to comment upon and amend interpretations of their data. This meant that there was no clear-cut end-point to the interview at which debriefing was appropriate. Interpretation and ownership: During any interview process participants and interviewers produce data together, and it is usually the researcher's role to analyse and interpret this data. Problems can occur when interviewee and interviewer disagree over the interpretation of these data. The way in which this issue was approached by myself in the present research was to make interpretations available to participants, and to invite their comments and evaluations. This consultative process has had the effect of casting the research participants as co-researchers (Murray and Sixsmith 1998). In the case of the use of e-mail posts and archives deposited in publicly available forums, there are a number of procedural steps which can be taken to endeavor to represent the authors words in the way they were intended. This includes considering the whole web of posts which precede, follow on from, and relate to the posts quoted in research (Sixsmith and Murray (b) in press). Another concern revolves around ownership and use of interview material for publication. The ERSC Qualitative Data Archive Resource Centre (ESRC

1998) referring to the 1988 Copyright, Design and Patents Act, states that quoting long extracts from any interview constitutes a breach of copyright if researchers have not explicitly asked for and obtained consent from research participants. Invoking the copyright law with regard to interviewees' posts, where authors of posts would be credited, may compromise anonymity and confidentiality. In the present research I sought permission to use extracts from all interviews. Interview Procedures Here you say exactly how your interviews proceed/proceeded. Once again, the below excerpt from my own research illustrates how this might be done. Face-to-face (FTF) interviews were conducted at an agreed place (interviewees home or workplace, researchers' institution, or the institution responsible for their prosthetic-related services) for a period of approximately one hour. A list of topics provided a provisional structure to the interview. Interviews were recorded with the permission of interviewees. As with participants interviewed face-to-face, the 'interview' for e-mail participants was semi-structured. Unlike FTF interviews, e-mail involves sequential exchanges over an extended time period (Murray and Sixsmith 1998). In contrast to FTF participants, those interviewed via e-mail were asked only a few questions at a time. There is, then, no comparable length of interview with the above group. Rather, the approach was to invite responses over a prolonged period of time, the culmination of which depended upon participants' willingness to continue, as well as research necessity. This process was repeated until all issues had been exhausted. E-mail participants were initially advised that involvement would be limited to a period of four months, based on a prediction of one e-mail exchange per week. However, this period was variable. Participants were involved in such exchanges for periods of two to six months (on average 15 contacts were made per person, although this varied considerably between individuals, from 5 to 60). Transcription of interviews Here information is provided about how you intend or performed transcription of your interviews. For example: In the case of face-to-face (FTF) interviewees, a cassette recorder was used to record all verbal exchanges between researcher and participants. For the first two interviews all talk between interviewer and interviewee were transcribed. Pauses, laughter, sighs and other non-verbal sounds were noted alongside the text, which was supplemented by notes made during and immediately following the interview regarding such detail as gestures used, and movements such as standing and 'displaying' (e.g. hitching trousers to show the interviewer a prosthetic leg). The rest of the interviews were repeatedly listened to, themes identified and transcribed along with accompanying non-verbal sounds. Therefore, only partial talk between interviewer and interviewee were transcribed in subsequent interviews. These partial transcriptions were also supplemented by notes taken during the course of the interview. The punctuation used in the transcripts, such as full stops and commas, was an interpretative approximation by the interviewer. While such transcription is problematic, the fact of the interviewer and transcriber being the same person is advantageous. In the case of electronic mail (e-mail) interviews, the textual nature of the exchange eliminated the usual time required to transcribe interviews (Foster 1994), as participants typed in the data themselves (Herring 1996). Participants' communications were stored on both the hard disk of the computer and floppy discs. This allowed instantaneous paper copies to be made. The text of the interviews was readily imported to word

processing packages where it could be manipulated alongside textual interpretations. Data Analysis This section is to inform your reader how you went about analysing your data. Because there are no standard, or universal ways of analysing qualitative data, you need to spell out exactly what you did. If you used grounded theory, discourse analysis, or other forms of thematic analysis, this needs to be clearly stated and referenced. A summary will also be needed, such as the following: The methodological approach used in the study was designed to produce data that could undergo a thematic analysis. The data collected was analysed in the following ways. Firstly, transcripts were read in order to identify themes with a focus on the phenomena being researched. Audio tapes were repeatedly listened to in order to identify themes which were then transcribed. These themes were noted, given tentative titles, and grouped with demonstrative quotes from participants' interviews along with preliminary interpretations. This process was iterative: as analysis progressed themes were clarified, refined and added to. Reliability and Validity There are different evaluative criteria for quantitative and qualitative research. Some qualitative researchers argue for reliability and validity in qualitative research. However, this is interpreted and demonstrated differently than for quantitative research. So, a section on reliability and validity for a qualitative report might look something like this: Two important criteria to assess the internal validity and reliability of qualitative research have been suggested by Smith (1996). These are internal coherence and presentation of evidence. The first of these, internal coherence, refers to whether the argument presented within a study is internally consistent and supported by the data. The second of these, presentation of evidence, refers to the publication of sufficient quotations from participants' discourse to enable readers to evaluate the interpretation. In this manner, emergent themes are presented herein supported by participants' actual discourse, in order that the reliability and validity of the interpretations can be assessed by the reader. Results and Discussion You may collapse or separate the results/discussion section. A decision on this should be guided by the benchmark of clarity. The nature of qualitative data is that it is rich in description and you must use illustrative quotations and descriptions to convey the meaning of your material and your understanding of it. Although this section of your assignment should be full of clear examples, they should be short and relevant to the point you are making. No single quote or description should be presented more than once (although you may make more than one reference to it). Start by reminding the reader precisely what the study was looking at - give an overall picture of the results and then a more detailed explanation. If you have attempted to validate the data (by a negotiated account either with the participant or a co-researcher) this should also be included in this section. Make it clear to the reader which points seem to be well established from your work, and which are more speculative. The first paragraph of the results, findings, or themes section might look something like this:

The research process discussed here produced a number of emergent themes regarding a variety of experiences surrounding prosthesis use. In what follows it is our aim to present and subsequently discuss a portion of these themes under three broad organising categories: the embodied experience of prosthesis use; the personal meanings of prosthesis use; and the social meanings of prosthesis use. It is important to note here that these organising groupings are not unproblematic: indeed, it is our contention that these areas are not distinct, but are grounded and constituted within each other. Therefore, these categories are for presentational convenience. Moreover, it is not intended here to produce an exhaustive account of these (or other thematic) areas, but to signal and highlight just some of the important issues which have arisen from this research activity. It is increasingly seen as good practice in qualitative research to include a reflective section (which might form a latter part of the Discussion section / chapter, or appear as a part of the methodology section /chapter) in order to aid the reader in assessing reliability and validity, in which the nature of research relationships are made clear. For instance, the opening two paragraphs of a piece of research reads as follows: The purpose of this section of the chapter is to give a reflexive account of how I was implicated within the research process of my work, including the formulation of the research, and the collection and analyses of the data. In what follows, I set out the reasons why researchers, including myself, engage in research reflexivity. Following this I give consideration to a number of contentious issues within the academic community, particularly feminist qualitative research, which are implicated within my own research activity. These include the politics and ethics of representing participants in research documentation, the desirability of similarities and differences between researchers and participants, the power relations between researcher and participants, and the control over representations. With each of these I give consideration to my own work, and how these issues arose, proved problematic and were addressed. Conclusion Explain your overall approach and rationale for carrying out the research. What was your original purpose? Did this change over time and if so how? Here you should stand back from your study and look at it, "analysing how appropriate the method was in retrospect, what it felt like to be a researcher doing the study, what it might have felt like to be a participant (including any reports from the participant), what flaws in the design came to light in the experience of completing the study, how it might be improved of it were to be replicated in the future, what other ways it could have been done and what further research needs to be done". For a fuller description of how to write up qualitative research refer to the further reading listed. Also use relevant journal articles as models as the precise formal of the report will to some extent depend on the approach used. References and further reading Banister, P., Burman, E., Parker, I., Taylor, M., &Tindall, C. (1994). Qualitative methods in psychology. Buckingham: Open University Press. Chapters 1, 4, 9, 10. Mayut, P. & Morehouse, R. (1994). Beginning qualitative research: A philosophic and practical guide. London: Farmer Press.

Analysis of qualitative data and writing up qualitative research Taylor, S. and Bogdan, R. (1984). Introduction to qualitative research methods (2nd edition.). New York: Wiley. Chapters 6 & 7. Hayes, N. (1997). Doing qualitative analysis in psychology. Hove: Erlbaum.