Successful qualitative articles: A tentative list of cautionary advice

Introducing the list

Do I need to member-check? Do I have to use qualitative software? How many interviews must I do? These were but a few of the questions we fielded from the large crowd of people who attended a panel entitled: Journal Editors Forum on Publishing Qualitative Research at the 2013 annual conference of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR). Given the panel abstract’s promise to, ‘create a discussion with participants about what constitutes a rigorous publishable qualitative study’ the ‘it depends’ answer they received to all of the above questions may have seemed frustratingly evasive.

SSWR is the most prestigious research-based social work conference held in the US and qualitative researchers have not always been a welcomed constituency. Many of my colleagues have fought hard over the last decade to make our presence felt at this gathering. For example, founding Qualitative Social Work (QSW) editors, Roy Ruckdeschel and Ian Shaw had to advocate for a spot on the panel of journal editors in past years. So, as a new co-editor of QSW, I (Karen) gratefully accepted the invitation to participate this year.

Among other things, the panel abstract promised that this session would discuss ‘key features of successful articles.’ With some trepidation, I took up the challenge to come up with a helpful list. I worried that the simple checklist approach was fraught with danger, particularly if you believe, as I do, in the value of diverse and inclusive approaches to qualitative inquiry. Of course, failing to provide some sort of useful guidance is cowardly. So Michal and I offer a reprise of the list on the next few pages knowing full well that it is incomplete, that others will challenge elements, and that some parts of it might be misunderstood in the absence of a more complete discussion. However, we do hope it can serve as a point of departure for continuing conversations.

The list itself

Know your reading audience. Ask and answer questions of interest to that audience. Young scholars often work so hard on the act of writing an article, that they lose track of the art of writing it for their readers. Every journal – and here you could substitute book, book chapter, report, or other scholarly home for written work – has a target audience. Pay attention to that audience and craft the article accordingly. Ask and answer questions of interest to this audience.

For example, if you have conducted a mixed methods study on male adolescent survivors of sexual abuse, your choice of potential journals might include those that specialize on the topic (abuse and maltreatment, violence, trauma), those that specialize on the population (adolescents, children, youth, gender), those that focus on methodology (qualitative methods, mixed methods) or those that target a profession or discipline (social work, sociology, criminology). Of course many journals – like QSW – have overlapping interest areas.

The point is that knowing something about the interests and expertise of your readers helps answers questions about the content and construction of your article. So, when faced with questions from our SSWR audience about how much space to allocate to methods, or theory, or implications, or background, the answer is partly contingent on the reading audience. What knowledge, expertise, and interests are your readers likely to have? For empirical studies in QSW, we particularly expect to see a thorough and respectful treatment of methodology (including references to methodological literatures) and results that are of interest to social work practitioners, educators, and researchers. We expect authors to ask and answer questions that are important to social work. We expect them to remember that QSW has a global audience. (One of the most common criticisms doled out to US researchers who have submitted manuscripts to QSW is that their literature reviews are too US-centric.)

Write well. As obvious – and simple – as this sounds, I cannot overemphasize how important it is for an article to be well written from first to last sentence. Of course, no article will get rejected on the basis of a few typographical errors. However, when sentences are poorly constructed, words are improperly used, and typographical errors appear throughout, it erodes the reader’s confidence. These errors are particularly jarring when they occur in the abstract or the opening paragraphs of a manuscript. From first-hand experience, I know that abstracts are often written in last-minute haste. However, they are the first things a journal editor – or reviewer – reads, and they set the tone for the rest of the reading experience.

Do not confuse methods with methodology. In general, methods refer to the individual steps of a research project. The overall study design – all the steps taken together – constitutes its methodology. Standing alone, methods of data collection (I conducted ‘interviews’ or ‘focus groups’); or methods of data analysis (I ‘coded’ or ‘conducted thematic analysis’); or methods of sampling (it was ‘purposive’ or ‘snowball’) does not a methodology make. At QSW we expect to see the entire, logically integrated, plan reported in the article. So when faced with questions at SSWR such as: do I need to member-check? May I sample from one location? How many interviews do I need? Do I need to use software? The ‘it depends’ answer is contingent on the overall design of your project. These questions cannot be answered unhinged from their methodological and epistemological framework (Staller, 2012).

Furthermore, at QSW we would like to see more than superficial reference to the methodological literature. While there are lots of excellent books and articles written on qualitative methods and methodologies, I will take this opportunity to note that the most popular – and frequently downloaded – articles published in QSW provide useful advice on methods and methodologies (Abrams, 2010; Fleming, 2010; Floersch et al., 2010; Fraser, 2004; Kim, 2010; Riessman and Quinney, 2005; Shaw, 2008; Tufford and Newman, 2010).

Present your methodology as a coherent, consistent, and integrated whole . This is related to the issue above. The best manuscripts report a scientific story from beginning to end that is logical, consistent, thorough, rigorous, synthesized, and well supported. For example, you should pose an interesting research question (or manageable area of investigation). Your sampling and data collection strategies should make sense relative to that question. Your data analysis plan is rigorous and consistent with the question you want to answer and the empirical evidence (data) you have collected. Your findings are logically and clearly derived from your analysis and answer the research question posed. The implications of the study are logically linked to the study findings. Your background, use of (or production of) theory, and discussion sections are an integral part of the entire narrative. For an excellent discussion of what this looks like from a reviewer’s perspective see Jim Drisko’s (1999) essay on reviewing manuscripts.

That said, traditional manuscripts need not be boring. In fact, Jane Gilgun has argued that qualitative work should always have ‘grab’ (Gilgun, 2005). I often use the opening sentences of Elliot Liebow’s final, book-length, ethnography as an example of how a master writes up his study. They read:

Tell Them Who I Am, focuses on the dynamics of shelter life. Initially, my aim was to write a straightforward description of shelter life and, ideally, to try to see the world of homelessness as homeless women see and experience it. Later, when trying to make sense of my notes, I realized that another of my aims was to explain both to myself and others how these women remained human in the face of inhuman conditions. (Liebow, 1993: 1)

Impose intellectual discipline. Writing up and reporting any final research project requires imposing some ‘intellectual discipline’ on the material presented. It is important to weed out what does not belong; to place information where the readers expect to find it; and to avoid ‘drift.’

Weeding is no easy task. I frequently tell my students that it is much harder to decide what not to include than what to include in their thesis. Focusing on the core – and eliminating distracting asides – makes for a stronger presentation. Placing information where it belongs is another way of saying: anticipate your readers’ questions. It is always reassuring when reading an article, and a question leaps to mind, to find its answer in the next sentence or two.

Finally, drift (in my view) is a natural part of the process of constructing an article. It is only problematic when the submitted version continues to reflect the struggle without a final, overall, cleanup. For example, ‘problem drift’ occurs when an author offers multiple variations of the research questions, problem areas, goals or objectives of the study, in the first several pages of the manuscript. Drisko (1999) described the experience of reviewing a manuscript that shows evidence of what I am calling ‘problem drift’ this way, ‘The research question isn’t well stated. I had to dig for it. Each re-statement varies somewhat. This is a serious flaw that undermines the good content and methods significantly’ (p. 418). When authors drift, readers are left with the following options: try to figure out which questions are relevant and how they are all related; wonder if it is possible to answer all the questions and problems presented; assume that the author does not really know what he or she is actually studying; or assume that the authors eventually figured out what they were studying but did not clean up the manuscript to reflect those final decisions. Of course, in qualitative inquiry, questions may evolve during the research process, however – in the final reporting – the reader should be clear where the researchers ended up. The Liebow example, cited above, provides an excellent example.

Creativity and rigor in writing and methods: Attention to the balance . Highly innovative and creative work runs the risk of being harshly (or perhaps unfairly) evaluated. Occasionally (or perhaps often) conversations about ‘rigor’ serve as the death knell to experimentation or innovation. As an editor of this journal, who has engaged in a fair amount of experimental writing and research herself, I hate the thought of quashing ideas, stifling creativity, or snuffing out new approaches to knowing things under the guise of ‘rigor.’ On the other hand, ‘anything goes’ poses the risk of not being taken seriously. Where is the balance? If you do something truly different, you will probably have to work twice as hard. Be aware of this when you submit such a manuscript. Be prepared to justify, explain, and defend it. You might also consider submitting innovative pieces under our ‘new voices’ category of submissions (See ‘article types’ under ‘manuscript submission’ guidelines at http://qsw.sagepub.com/).

Facing reviews and revisions: Know when to be humble and when to fight back. Every experienced researcher has been on the receiving end of the peer review process and received two different sorts of revision requests. One involves useful feedback that makes your work stronger (even though you really, really had hoped you were done with it!). The other involves feedback that is off target (perhaps because the reviewer is not well versed in your methodology; is unwilling to push the boundaries you want pushed, or the like). Be sure – when you receive a ‘revise and resubmit’ on your manuscript – that you honestly, and objectively, sort out one kind of comment from the other. You must take all the comments seriously. However, that does not mean you cannot explain disagreements and resist inappropriate revisions. Nonetheless, serious consideration of all of them will make your work stronger.

This issue of QSW

Of course, the articles that grace the following pages of this issue have successfully navigated our submission process. We hope you see some of the above advice reflected in the final products. As always, the empirical work presented on the following pages runs the gamut.

The opening article in this issue, written by Candace Christensen, explores the experiences of students who created a performance-based sexual assault prevention program using feminist leadership techniques. It is an excellent demonstration of the thorough integration of methodology I described as the neatly told ‘scientific story’ above. Christensen offers interesting findings around sharing power, empowerment, and embodied knowledge and she concludes with clearly stated implications for social workers.

Next, Carol Cleaveland presents findings from a multi-method, longitudinal case study of the attitudes of suburban residents in a community faced with increasing numbers of newly arriving immigrant workers, many of them undocumented. The rich and varied data collected over a two-year period, provides insights about residents’ economic concerns and tolerance levels for the newcomers. While this study took place in the US, migrant workers and the hostile receptions they can face, is not an isolated phenomenon.

The next pair of articles deal with child protective service systems, one in Canada and the other in Norway. Kimberly Brisebois looks at caseworker attitudes in Canada after emphasis was placed on giving priority to kinship care arrangements. She finds some troubling aspects associated with this shift in policy. Renee Thørnblad and Amy Holtan, take a look at the Norwegian foster care system through the eyes of the young adults who have grown up in it. They offer findings about the various ways youth demonstrate, and express, agency. Taken together, these two articles serve as a reminder that in spite of national differences, foster care systems play a large role in the lives of children, their families, and their social workers. As practitioners, educators, and researchers we can learn from the experiences of other countries.

The following two articles grapple with working with those suffering from mental illness. First, Scandinavian researchers, Marit Borg, Marius Veseth, Per-Elinar Binder and Alain Topor shed light on how individuals recovering from bipolar disorders tackle and understand work, a central aspect of most people’s lives made all the more difficult by mental illness. Not surprisingly, a complicated picture emerges. Second, Göstas and colleagues explore two commonly used therapeutic approaches, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and psychodynamic psychotherapy (PDT) for treating those with mental illness, from the perspective of the clients receiving treatment. Not surprisingly, clients found therapy to be hard work but significantly, the researchers point to the importance of creating context and establishing a cooperative working relationship between clients and their social work therapists as necessary components of successful intervention.

In the last full-length article, Karla Washington takes a compelling look at how informal (and often novice) caregivers negotiate the difficult tasks of acquiring skills and managing symptoms of terminally ill hospice patients. The implications for social workers are clearly laid out in the article. This study is a reminder of the critical need for research on these difficult topics and the challenges faced by those who are courageous enough to conduct it.

Finally, the issue closes, as usual, with the book review essays. Deborah Gioia, the reviews editor, notes that she is currently, ‘in touch with the notion of unwrapping treasures.’ This serves as an apt metaphor for her editorial and the two essays that follow. Both essays are eloquent stand-alone pieces of writing and both of them engage with interesting and creative new books. In the first, Kennedy Saldanha reviews Tami Spry’s innovative work, Body, Paper, Stage: Writing and Performing Autoethnography. Anyone who has the good fortune to watch Spry in action, like Saldanha, knows what a treat this book is likely to be. In the final review, a thoughtful, original scholar, Allan Irving, contemplates the scholarship offered in Stanley Witkin’s latest book, Social Constructionism and Social Practice: Interpretations and Innovations. Irving calls the edited volume, ‘the most original contribution to social work scholarship and practice in many years.’ Taken as a whole the book review section in this issue is a treasure trove.