The role of the researcher in qualitative research is to attempt to access the thoughts and feelings of study participants. It is also possible to use different types of research in the same study, an approach known as “mixed methods” research, and further reading on this topic may be found at the end of this paper. Qualitative research is used to gain insights into people’s feelings and thoughts, which may provide the basis for a future stand-alone qualitative study or may help researchers to map out survey instruments for use in a quantitative study. As we suggested in our earlier article, 1 an important point about qualitative research is that there is no attempt to generalize the findings to a wider population. Such study may occur in any number of contexts, but here, we focus on pharmacy practice and the way people behave with regard to medicines use (e.g., to understand patients’ reasons for nonadherence with medication therapy or to explore physicians’ resistance to pharmacists’ clinical suggestions). What qualitative study seeks to convey is why people have thoughts and feelings that might affect the way they behave.
From this perspective, bias and subjectivity are not inherently negative but they are unavoidable as a result, it is best that they be articulated up-front in a manner that is clear and coherent for readers. When being reflexive, researchers should not try to simply ignore or avoid their own biases (as this would likely be impossible) instead, reflexivity requires researchers to reflect upon and clearly articulate their position and subjectivities (world view, perspectives, biases), so that readers can better understand the filters through which questions were asked, data were gathered and analyzed, and findings were reported. Qualitative work requires reflection on the part of researchers, both before and during the research process, as a way of providing context and understanding for readers.
6 Some researchers use qualitative methodologies but adopt a different standpoint, and an example of this appears in the work of Thurston and others, 7 discussed later in this paper. It gives researchers the opportunity to put themselves in another person’s shoes and to understand the subjective experiences of participants. Phenomenology shares some features with grounded theory (such as an exploration of participants’ behaviour) and uses similar techniques to collect data, but it focuses on understanding how human beings experience their world. Grounded theory and its later modified versions (e.g., Strauss and Corbin 5) use face-to-face interviews and interactions such as focus groups to explore a particular research phenomenon and may help in clarifying a less-well-understood problem, situation, or context. 4 Briefly, ethnography involves researchers using direct observation to study participants in their “real life” environment, sometimes over extended periods. In the previous paper, 1 we outlined 3 commonly used methodologies: ethnography 2, grounded theory 3, and phenomenology. Within the context of pharmacy practice research, qualitative approaches have been used to examine a diverse array of topics, including the perceptions of key stakeholders regarding prescribing by pharmacists and the postgraduation employment experiences of young pharmacists (see “Further Reading” section at the end of this article). Whereas quantitative research methods can be used to determine how many people undertake particular behaviours, qualitative methods can help researchers to understand how and why such behaviours take place. Qualitative research can help researchers to access the thoughts and feelings of research participants, which can enable development of an understanding of the meaning that people ascribe to their experiences.
In this article, we review some principles of the collection, analysis, and management of qualitative data to help pharmacists interested in doing research in their practice to continue their learning in this area. In an earlier paper, 1 we presented an introduction to using qualitative research methods in pharmacy practice.
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