International Journal of Qualitative Methods

The purpose of this article is to describe our experience using a qualitative team approach and predetermined theoretical framework to assess sensibility of a newly developed HIV disability questionnaire. Two interviewers conducted structured qualitative interviews with 22 adults living with HIV, asking participants how well the questionnaire characterized the disability they experienced living with HIV. Data collection and analysis occurred over six stages with four analysts who met throughout. Strengths of our approach included the ability to assess the sensibility of the questionnaire from the perspective of adults living with HIV, collect and analyze data across multiple sites, establish a systematic team analytical process, and enhance rigour through multiple coding, team reflexivity, and interviewer and analyst triangulation. Challenges included increased resources required to coordinate and implement this approach, differential recruitment rates, initial divergent analytical styles, and the potential to miss emerging codes given the structured nature of the analysis. This article offers a methodological process for researchers to use a qualitative team approach with directed content analysis to assess the sensibility of a new health status questionnaire.

The article examines the contribution of method triangulation to the study of the self-construction of a schizophrenic inpatient in several encounters with a psychiatrist. We used institutional conversation analysis to probe the data for interactional sequence organization, while a positioning analysis enabled us to explore different levels of interpersonal positioning. Positioning is defined as a process whereby interlocutors locate one or several dimensions of their self in relation to others. Using these analyses, we identified, described, and interpreted the inpatient's discursive attempts, successes, and failures to construct who she was in the psychiatrist-inpatient encounters. The theoretical, methodological, and method frameworks are presented in the first, second, third, and fourth sections. Then, illustrative data are presented and analyzed in the fifth and sixth sections. Finally, the insights gained from the analyses, as well as the contribution of method triangulation, are elaborated on in the discussion.

This article reports on a research project relating to the newly implemented mandatory Swedish national mathematics tests for third-grade students (nine and ten years old). The project's main research concerns the students' ideas about and reactions toward these tests and how the specific test situation affects their perception of their own mathematical proficiency. Drawing on theories that suggest identities are more fluid than static, we want to understand how students with special needs are “created.” The specific aim of this article is to discuss how our research methods have been refined during the various phases of data collection and report on the resulting implications. It discusses issues surrounding child research and how methods involving video recording and video stimulated recall dialogue (VSRD) can contribute to research on children's experiences. Particular attention is given to methodological and ethical issues and how to disrupt power relations. In this article, we argue that the context of the test situation not only impacted upon the students but also affected how we changed, developed, and adapted our approaches as the project evolved.

The possibilities inherent in the collection and use of video footage point to an important innovation for classroom research. Unfortunately, researchers often experience uncertainty about incorporating video into their methodological approach as it can present a potential minefield of operational, technical, and ethical issues that require consideration and negotiation. Nevertheless, with the increased emphasis on the use of digital technologies, the timing is right to engage in more in-depth discussions about the role of video data in education research. In contributing to this discussion, this article unpacks several issues connected to the use of video technology as a tool for data collection and analysis. This article focuses on addressing some of the barriers faced by education researchers such as making sampling decisions, maintaining research authenticity, and grappling with ethical issues that arise. In terms of the advantages for researchers, this article highlights the suitability of video technology for classroom-based research because it provides a permanent and detailed record, which can be analyzed from multiple perspectives. These issues are explained through the experiences of an education researcher, who used video as the main data source for documenting and examining the practices of two effective primary science teachers in Perth, Western Australia.

The growing acknowledgement of the value of listening to children's views and experiences in social research, popularly termed as “listening to their voices,” brings with it methodological consequences. Regarding children as expert informants about their own lives carries with it the simultaneous call for researchers to be experts in developing and employing appropriate strategies that can effectively elicit the insights that children can bring to a research topic. With younger children, the use of participatory methodologies has been foregrounded as the key to unlocking their potential to contribute rich and useful perspectives to inform research into their lives. This article explores the usefulness of employing preschoolers' drawings within the context of a co-construction process to facilitate the children's construction of ideas and reinforce their voices in research. The case is made that the quality of the dialogical engagement is as important as the drawing itself, and both visual images and the verbal exchanges are central to the children's meaning-making process. In the co-construction process, both adult and child are (ideally) equal players and the resulting dialogical process plays a major role in the constitution of the phenomena. The role of the researcher as the co-constructor can be a challenging one because it entails engaging and supporting children's views and the expression of these views. The discussion and illustrations from the first author's research projects contribute to the literature base on positioning preschool children as valid social actors in their communities.

We operate through an ethos of empowerment of all participants, and aim for participatory research practice which has at its heart an active involvement in promoting the rights of children as citizens with voice and power. (Pascal & Bertram, 2009, p. 249)

This article explores the use of participatory drawing as a non-mechanical visual research method in qualitative research with children and youth. Because of its co-constructed and playful nature, as well as its lack of dependence on linguistic proficiency, participatory drawing emerges as a highly efficient and ethically sound research strategy that is particularly suited for work with children and young people across a variety of cultural contexts. The analysis of drawn images, complemented by a subsequent discussion of these drawings in the context of their production, has the potential of revealing a more nuanced depiction of concepts, emotions, and information in an expressive, empowering, and personally relevant manner. As a review of the participatory drawing methodology, this article draws on several examples in order to highlight the inherent affordances of the visual mode and discuss the benefits and limitations of using this strategy in research with children and youth.

The aim of this article was to explore, exemplify, and discuss how a participatory hermeneutic method designed for children with special needs can be developed in a caring context. Examples from a clinical study are presented to illustrate how play, as both a methodological concept in hermeneutics and the substance of caring, was applied in research by means of the perioperative dialogue. In participatory research, an ethical approach based on subtle human interplay can be triggered by means of dialogue with parents. Thus, truth can emerge via continuity of care, while the substance of caring can be directed toward the child. Such a clinical method is worth adding to the child research repertoire.

Research and processes of knowledge production are often based on racialised and imperialistic frameworks that have led to either the exclusion or the pathologisation of minority groups. Researchers address issues of exclusion by adopting recruitment strategies that involve negotiating with gatekeepers to ensure the inclusion of minority or marginalised groups. This often involves in-depth scrutiny of gatekeepers and requires the researchers to negotiate deals and to make personal disclosures. However, there remains relatively little discussion on the pragmatic ethical issues facing researchers in the field as a result of these interactions. This article suggests that interactions with gatekeepers present ethical issues that can be effectively addressed and managed by researchers through the exercise of phronesis. Phronesis allows researchers to make critical ethical decisions based on the specific characteristics of the research sites and subjects, not least of which are those issues that emerge as a consequence of researcher positionality. Such decisions are not necessarily identified or accommodated through bureaucratic processes which govern research ethics. We advance the notion of research ethics as an ongoing process that requires researcher skills and engagement, rather than a one-off bureaucratic exercise.

This article is based on a secondary analysis of transcripts from a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project that sought to represent through photovoice the lived experience of five exited sex trade workers. The focus of the secondary thematic transcript analysis was to discern group processes and describe group dynamics of six two-hour group meetings. Creating and maintaining an environment of safety emerged as a primary theme. The group processes resembled mutual aid groups, which are characterized by people offering assistance to each other in an interpersonal forum that demands personal reflection. Group dynamics revealed that an important aspect of CBPR photovoice research is the collaborative creation of a safe place for showing photographs and storytelling.

In this article we problematize our field roles as two linguistic ethnographers who aim to study the communication and documentation practices drawn upon by care workers in elderly care facilities in Sweden. Our field roles are discussed in relation to the complex nature of care workers' knowledge and competence, which results from three different aspects of their work-identities: institutional, professional, and individual. As researchers, we found ourselves in constant dialogue with the research participants, and our field roles were continuously shaped and reshaped according to the individuals and the situations in which we became involved. Even aspects of our own identities taken into the field, such as our background and personal qualities, proved to be important in establishing good relations with the care staff. Coming closer to the participants' professional identity proved to be of utmost importance for interpreting their choices and decisions in the workplace. Identity negotiation is presented here as a constructive way of discussing ethnographic field roles in the research field.

The member check has been heralded as an important component of validation in qualitative research. Traditionally, the member check has been used in order to assess the accuracy with which a researcher has represented a participant's subjectivity. Some theorists, however, have argued that change, rather than representation, should be sought as a primary goal for qualitative research. The difference between using representation or change as a marker of validity has been described as a transactional/transformational divide. I argue that the member check can be utilized to span this divide in order to support a holistic view of validity. In particular, I assert that researchers should not expect participant subjectivities to remain static throughout the research process. Examples of the member check used in this manner are provided.

This is the story of how a chemical engineer and a medical microbiologist overcame their positivist training and deeply held disciplinary attitudes to engage with non-positivist qualitative methodology. Through a series of facilitated reflections they explored what helped and hindered their transition from positivist to non-positivist inquiry. To move forward they needed to acknowledge the extent and nature of the transition they were making, find metaphors to dissolve troubling dualisms, and balance a desire to reach out to others with the need to manage the very real sense of vulnerability that came with embracing subjectivity. Their experiences suggest that pragmatism may be a useful bridging framework for the growing number of academics from the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines turning to qualitative methodologists for help to move beyond positivist research.

This article explores the possibilities and limits of a hermeneutic way of being in the world, more specifically being a researcher as a part of human, embodied existence. Understanding existence as embodied highlights the subjectivity of a researcher. For a hermeneutic researcher this subjectivity is both a precondition for interpretation and something that might endanger the scientific endeavour. In this article, I examine the possibilities of combining Hans-Georg Gadamer's empathetic hermeneutics with Paul Ricoeur's critical hermeneutics as a means of both recognizing and, to some extent, controlling my subjectivity in the research process. With Gabriel Marcel I also argue for hermeneutics as an embodied experience. This is exemplified by my study with a focus on the existential dimensions of the nursing profession. The first part of the article introduces Marcel and his philosophical anthropology concerning our bodily existence as essential for shared lives with others. In the second part, this understanding of self and others is further developed by means of the hermeneutics of Gadamer and Ricoeur. In the third part, I present a way of applying hermeneutics in procedures for interviews, transcription, and analysis of data.

Critical approaches to research are becoming increasingly more prevalent but occupational science and critical approaches have not been explicitly combined into one approach despite the potential to enrich the understanding of the assumptions and ideologies underlying human activity. In this article we outline an approach to research that is mutually informed by occupational and critical social science perspectives. The critical occupational approach we describe can be used to explore the ways in which knowledge is produced through engagement in occupation, who controls knowledge production, the mechanisms of how occupations are taken up, and who stands to gain or lose. We discuss the implications and considerations for generating research purposes and methods and conducting analyses. We then illustrate the use of the approach through a case study. We conclude this article with consideration of the wider uses and implications of a critical occupational approach within health and social research.

Drawing on theoretical work within ethnography and poststructuralism, this article discusses a conceptualization of autoethnography as assemblage. The concept of assemblage includes but goes beyond the literal bringing together of a range of heterogeneous elements in different modalities to offer different perspectives on a phenomenon. It challenges and displaces boundaries between the individual and the social through a focus on practice, which offers a new ontology of the social. These ideas are illustrated through excerpts from an autoethnographic study of an occupational therapist working with young people in a Sydney children's hospital in the mid-1980s. The article makes visible a material, relational, and affective landscape of remembered practice. Through successive displacements of the self as the primary site of experience and meaning, we seek to contribute new understandings about the potential for autoethnography to engage with professional practice as a space of multiplicity.

This article describes the object-interview as a Deleuzian space in which subjects and objects, living and nonliving, entangle together. I developed the object-interview to understand the connections that 11 Midwestern family history genealogists made between objects (e.g., documents, photographs, and other artifacts) and their ancestors. The object-interview suggests an alternative way to think and do qualitative interviews informed by poststructural theories. The method draws on French philosopher Deleuze's concepts of the fold, events, and a life, as well as conventional qualitative interview literature. Deleuze's concepts offer a way to rethink objects and subjects as fibrous, connective, and folding entities in qualitative interviews. Such a rethinking offers an alternative to subject-centered conventional qualitative interviews in which subjects are teased apart from objects and subjects primarily produce knowledge. The object-interview, then, is a Deleuzian space in which the supposed distinctions between subjects and objects, as well as other binary divisions, become indistinct, or entangled, as both subjects and objects produce knowledge. That space enabled me to create the concept ensemble of life—a constantly shifting group of objects associated with a person's life. In this article, I describe the theoretical entanglement of the object-interview, the object-interview itself, the data it produced in my dissertation study, and the significance of the method to the field of qualitative research methods.

Empirical research, which has traditionally been privileged in Western health disciplines, has left notable gaps in the implementation of health interventions for Indigenous people and in the knowledge of and respect for Indigenous ways of knowing, both locally and globally. This article emphasizes the notion of pluralism in health research, and the responsibility of non-Indigenous researchers to collaborate respectfully and at a personal level with Indigenous people. It explores the value of unexpected forms of knowledge, and the need to recognize the stories and narratives of research participants as valuable in themselves, rather than as something to be dissected or reinterpreted out of context. Through the exploration of one data collection experience, we show how research collaboration, negotiation, and respect can transcend the boundaries between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, researchers and non-researchers, those with and without disabilities, and between countries.

In Canada, Aboriginal peoples often experience a multitude of inequalities when compared with the general population, particularly in relation to health (e.g., increased incidence of diabetes). These inequalities are rooted in a negative history of colonization. Decolonizing methodologies recognize these realities and aim to shift the focus from communities being researched to being collaborative partners in the research process. This article describes a qualitative community-based participatory research project focused on health and body image with First Nations girls in a Tribal Council region in Western Canada. We discuss our project design and the incorporation of creative methods (e.g., photovoice) to foster integration and collaboration as related to decolonizing methodology principles. This article is both descriptive and reflective as it summarizes our project and discusses lessons learned from the process, integrating evaluations from the participating girls as well as our reflections as researchers.

This article explores the use of collage portraits in qualitative research and analysis. Collage portraiture, an area of arts-based research (ABR), is gaining stature as a method of analysis and documentation in many disciplines. This article presents a method of creating collage portraits to support a narrative thematic analysis that explored the impact of participation in an art installation construction. Collage portraits provide the opportunity to include marginalized voices and encourage a range of linguistic and non-linguistic representations to articulate authentic lived experiences. Other potential benefits to qualitative research are cross-disciplinary study and collaboration, innovative ways to engage and facilitate dialogue, and the building and dissemination of knowledge.

In order to study children's subjective experiences, researchers need to employ methods that are interesting and engaging but at the same time can produce data that answers research questions. This article critically reflects on the use of an innovative visually expressive method, sand tray pictures, which allows children to communicate their multi-dimensional subjective experiences with nature. In this study, sand tray pictures were compared with photographs taken and pictures drawn by the children as approaches for understanding children's experiences in a public botanic garden during a five-day summer camp. Sand trays were identified as a highly effective tool in eliciting insights about children's subjective and socio-cultural experiences in nature.

The aim of this study was to see how contextual factors are expressed, used, and analyzed in data collected in focus group discussions (FGDs). The study includes an assessment of how the methodological reporting of contextual factors might influence and improve the trustworthiness of articles. Articles reporting workplace health, stress, and coping among health professionals were identified in a systematic review and used in the analysis. By using Vicsek's framework of situational factors for analysis of focus group results as a starting point, we found that contextual factors were most frequently described in the method sections and less frequently in the results and discussion sections. Vicsek's framework for the analysis of focus group results covers six contextual and methodological dimensions: interactional factors, personal characteristics of the participants, the moderator, the environment, time factors, and the content of FGDs. We found that the framework does not include a consideration of psychological safety, ethical issues, or organizational information. To deepen the analysis of focus group results, we argue that contextual factors should be analyzed as methodological dimensions and be considered as a sensitizing concept. Credibility, confirmability, dependability, and transferability can be strengthened by using, reporting, and discussing contextual factors in detail. The study contributes to elucidating how reporting of contextual data may enrich the analysis of focus group results and strengthen the trustworthiness. Future research should focus on clear reporting of contextual factors as well as further develop Vicsek's model to enhance reporting accuracy and transferability.

Visual displays help in the presentation of inferences and conclusions and represent ways of organizing, summarizing, simplifying, or transforming data. Data displays such as matrices and networks are often utilized to enhance data analysis and are more commonly seen in quantitative than in qualitative studies. This study reviewed the data displays used by three prestigious qualitative research journals within a period of three years. The findings include the types of displays used in these qualitative journals, the frequency of use, and the purposes for using visual displays as opposed to presenting data in text.

In this article we provide a critical reflection on the integrated use of solicited audio diaries, photography, and interviews in a study with disabled young men transitioning to adulthood. In the study, we developed a methodological approach for illuminating the intersectionality of gender, disability, and generation (life stage) identities. Drawing from a critical Bourdieusian perspective, we suggest that rather than producing single or “true” accounts, the combination of methods can be used to elucidate how participants establish, maintain, and reform their identities in everyday practices. Furthermore, we discuss how participants' acts of data creation are analyzable events in themselves, wherein participants do work to establish, maintain, and reform their identities. We conclude with some lessons learned and future directions.

Studies on gender and telephony tend to be quantitative and depict the purposes for which women and men use mobile telephones and landlines. Qualitative studies on the topic predominantly rely on face-to-face interviews to examine how telephone use genders space. We suggest these traditional methods of data collection leave unexamined the emotional and social relationships that emerge and are enabled by telephone use, which at times reconfigure and gender social spaces. In this article we present a collaborative autoethnographic inquiry based on our own telephone lives. We introduce a reflexive visual and textual methodological design, specifically diary notes, memory work, and photography, developed from our lives as researcher and researched. We examine an important theme in our findings, the physical placement of the telephone and the phone holder's awareness of the physicality of the telephone, which illustrates the importance of our methodological choices. We show how the placement of the phone by the users both genders space and creates emotional spaces.

Through an analysis of personal research diaries maintained during a prolonged period spent working in Palestine, this article analyses the importance of maintaining research diaries when on fieldwork. The evidence produced stems from a content analysis of fieldwork diaries kept while researching commemorative events in the West Bank, Palestine, during a period of global uncertainty and at a time of much change in the region. In espousing the benefits of the fieldwork diary it is shown that diaries assume a more important role than acting as a mere logging device; they have the capacity to allow for personal reflection and to help with the development of strategic responses to the inevitable challenges one would expect to face when working far from the relative comfort of home. The research diary as a cathartic tool for researchers to record fears and shortcomings in their work is discussed and personal insights into some of the challenges this researcher faced when engaged in ethnographic work in Ramallah, Palestine are provided. In summarising the benefits of maintaining research diaries, the author, lamenting the lack of transparency in the literature to date on the practicalities of fieldwork, calls for more open and honest reflection on the challenges associated with conducting fieldwork, particularly that which takes place in volatile or unstable regions.

Quality assessment in qualitative research has been, and remains, a contentious issue. The qualitative literature contains a diversity of opinions on definitions of and criteria for quality. This article attempts to organize this diversity, drawing on several examples of existing quality criteria, into four main approaches: qualitative as quantitative criteria, paradigm-specific criteria, individualized assessment, and bridging criteria. These different approaches can be mapped onto the historical transitions, or moments, in qualitative research presented by Denzin and Lincoln and, as such, they are presented alongside the various criteria reviewed. Socio-political conditions that have led us to a fractured future, where the value and significance of qualitative work may be marginalized, support the adoption of bridging criteria. These broadly applicable criteria provide means to assess quality and can be flexibly applied among the diversity of qualitative approaches used by researchers. Five categories that summarize the language used within bridging criteria are presented as a means to move forward in developing an approach to quality assessment that fosters communication and connections within the diversity of qualitative research, while simultaneously respecting and valuing paradigmatic and methodological diversity.

I present altered book making and poetry as a process of imaginative inquiry into arts-based research. Through a personal narrative and a consideration of the literature on arts-based research, I reconstruct the artistic inquiry that traces my learning journey. Current issues in arts-based research are sketched through words and mixed media artwork, including issues of terminology, philosophy, ethics, and purpose in arts-based research practice. The beginnings of a transformation-through-the-arts paradigm, powered by an aesthetic epistemology, are referenced as part of a multimedia learning journey. As a strategy for pedagogical inquiry, the altered book construction and narrative writing served to express some of the transformative learning, beauty, energy, and complexities related to this topic.

Space and time are concepts familiar to physicists, philosophers, and social scientists; they are operationalized with varying degrees of specificity but are both heralded as important to contextualizing research and understanding individual, cultural, and historical differences in perception and the social construction of reality. Space can range from, at the macro level, geographic region, to at the micro level, the immediate physical surroundings of an individual or group of persons. Similarly, a conceptualization of time can range from era or epoch to the passing of seconds and minutes within a situational dynamic of human interaction. In this article we examine the microcosmic end of the space-time spectrum, specifically as it relates to doing qualitative interviews with current or former criminal offenders. Through a comparative discussion of interviews with incarcerated, recently released, and active offenders, we pose questions and offer insights regarding how interviewers and interviewees perceive physical space and the passage of time and, most importantly, how these perceptions relate to the interview process and resulting data. Notably, we suggest that interviewer reflexivity should take into account not only the relationship, dialogue, and discourse between interviewer and interviewee but also space and time as perceived and constructed by both parties. Finally, we offer several key strategies for incorporating these considerations into the interviewer toolkit.

In qualitative research we are often presented with a tension between having open and fluid interviews to support staying true to the lived experiences of participants and achieving a level of abstraction from the data in order to uncover the essential structures and meanings of that particular lived experience. A way of resolving this tension is through the application of theoretical frameworks. Van Manen's four lifeworld existentials offer a lens through which to explore and navigate disparate interview data and uncover the essences of lived experience, without imposing categories upon the data itself. Drawing on a study exploring the lived experiences of childless women, we explore the process and principles in operationalising the existentials and discuss the potential implications for analysis and findings. The article demonstrates how Van Manen's lifeworld existentials present us with a holistic and valuable method for reflective practice, in coming to understand lived experience.

This article presents methodological reflections on the different streams of knowledge that are drawn upon during interpreted interviews and the shifts of power between (1) the interviewer, (2) the interpreter/co-researcher, and (3) the interviewee. Interpreters are increasingly seen as active agents in the interview process, and they act as cultural brokers. Interpretation by a nurse researcher introduces further challenges and benefits to the interview dynamic, which was explored through reflexive discussions with an independent researcher. These challenges include conducting interviews in a clinical setting, where the health professional–patient relationship remains active. A modified discourse analysis was used to examine the subject positioning in the interview situation and the power negotiations that ensued. The main conclusion that can be drawn from these reflexive accounts is that the use of different streams of knowledge (experiential, clinical, cultural, and academic) enhanced the interview interaction, and power relations were successfully negotiated to facilitate rapport and data collection. Reflexivity provides an important tool for identifying, and learning from, the challenges and benefits of working with an interpreter, who is also a co-researcher with multiple professional roles.

This article reports on an example of grounded theory methodology used in a case study to describe power inequalities among participants in an online forum at a higher education institution in South Africa. Critical poststructuralist theory informs the study as it investigates how hegemony influences the strategic interaction of participants. An interpretive analysis through coding procedures uncovered elements of intensified exclusion, inequality, and oppression. This took place within a virtual space which is theoretically idealized as an equalizer and promoter of freedom of speech. The process involved in the eliciting of voices and in the analysing and interpreting of subjective accounts is described to give an account of disillusioned experiences with a potentially liberating form of technology. The article contributes to qualitative methodology in applying the generic paradigmatic conditions within grounded theory and illustrates both the interrelatedness and the cyclic nature of the conditions within the specific paradigms of participants.

As community-based research (CBR) continues to emerge, CBR practitioners are beginning to ask, “How do we know if we are doing CBR well?” For some, this question may bring to mind the concept of rigour. Yet, how meaningful is rigour among diverse CBR partners from community, government, and academia? Using an exploratory approach, we engaged in dialogue a group of seven CBR practitioners from diverse contexts and asked the question, “Is rigour a meaningful concept in CBR?” We used interpretive description to analyse the interview and guide the application of findings in CBR practice. The findings are presented as three themes: Obligation, Representation, and Turn to Action. Participants expressed a sense of obligation to meet often competing expectations to do CBR well. The fulfillment of one obligation sometimes meant compromising another, thus presenting a dilemma to CBR practitioners. Representation outlines participants' beliefs that some obligations can be met through the analysis, interpretation, and carefully contextualized presentation of research findings on behalf of CBR partnerships. In Turn to Action, participants described their desire to participate in the co-construction of understanding and identified a need to conceptualize the meaning of doing CBR well. We recommend that practitioners of CBR continue to form communities of practice in which to engage in dialogue about rigour; together, we can navigate the identified dilemma and collaboratively construct what it means to do CBR well. Specifically, we recommend that communities of CBR practice strive to: (a) be transparent during CBR collaboration, (b) be in dialogue with other CBR practitioners, and (c) co-construct the meaning of doing CBR well.

The purpose of the researcher's study was to examine the meaning that intimate partners of female rape victims attached to their lived experiences after the rape. The conduct of qualitative research concerning non-offending partners of female rape victims, however, often involves multifaceted ethical and practical challenges, which can be managed through the use of pilot studies. The pilot study described in this report had three objectives. The first was to pretest and refine the proposed method for locating, accessing, and recruiting intimate partners of female rape victims, within the first two weeks after the rape, for participation in a six-month longitudinal study. The second objective was to identify and prevent all possible risk factors in the proposed recruitment and data collection methods that could harm the participants' safety during the main study. The third objective was to determine the feasibility of the main study, in terms of the limited financial and human resources available. The pilot phase was valuable in identifying ethical and methodological problems during the recruitment of participants and collection of data. It allowed for methodological adjustments prior to the main study and confirmed the feasibility of the overall research design. A pilot, pretesting phase is therefore seen as an essential component of a qualitative study involving a vulnerable population.

Purpose: In this article I provide a rich account of how I utilized and critically applied the research strategy of institutional ethnography to investigate transnational processes of legislative standardization. The text at the center of this inquiry is a model law that was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to create omnibus HIV/AIDS laws across West and Central Africa (2005-2010). Expanding upon the sociological approach of institutional ethnography, my research method is best understood as a transnational institutional ethnography (TIE). This article provides a case study of TIE for those interested in ethnographically exploring transnational processes across diverse institutional settings.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The complex legislative process being investigated was made visible through the use of participant observation, archival research, textual analysis, and informant interviews with national and international stakeholders (n=32). This research strategy involved ethnographic data collection in Canada, the United States, Switzerland, Austria, South Africa, and Senegal (2010-2011).

Findings: In this article a methodological discussion is offered focusing upon the everyday actualities of conducting transnational research in diverse environments, including cafes, conferences, courtrooms, and activist gatherings. I provide an account of (a) the complex institutional sites from which a research problematic may emerge; (b) challenges and opportunities when conducting interviews and identifying informants; (c) the importance of accounting for matters of geography and interview location in one's study design; and (d) the work of knowing where to look, what to read, and who to talk with during the iterative process of research and discovery.

Originality/Value: Moving beyond state-based organizational relations, a focus which is predominant in most institutional ethnographies, in this article I explicate the research process undertaken to ethnographically interrogate complex processes of transnational social organization and translocal text-mediated relations. Methodological insights and lessons learned regarding the experience of conducting transnational ethnographic research are provided.

A review of the research methodology literature suggests that owing to the difficulty of gaining access to and obtaining commitments from elites, social scientists less frequently use them as research respondents, opting instead to investigate those over whom power is exercised. This article provides insights into some intricacies of elite interviewing. It recounts the experience of a novice researcher in his quest to gain access to and interview elite individuals within the Ghanaian educational system for his PhD thesis. In the process, the article sheds light on strategies and techniques (related to interviewee identification, scheduling, and researcher preparation for the interview, as well as rapport establishment with potential interviewees) that are helpful as toolkits in ensuring that elite interview processes are not unduly derailed. The article argues that the strategies discussed are useful for circumventing formalised and “public relations” responses, which elites tend to communicate with the press and public.

A small qualitative research study was chosen as a time efficient way to allow students to participate in and complete a research project during a 16-week long semester course. In the first year of the research contribution course, student researchers asked participants with diabetes to complete time use diaries as a part of their initial data collection. The time use diaries were found to be an ineffective way to collect data on self-management of diabetes and were not useful as a basis for subsequent interviews with the participants. A review of the literature suggested reasons for this lack of effectiveness; in particular, participants tend not to record frequently done daily activities. Further review of the literature pointed toward the use of participant-generated photography as an alternative. Subsequent participants were asked to take photographs of their daily self-management of their diabetes for initial data collection. These photographs provided a strong basis for subsequent interviews with the participants. A comparison of the data collected and the emergent themes from the two different methods of initial data collection demonstrated the improved ability to answer the original research question when using participant-generated photography as a basis for participant interviews. The student researchers found the use of participant-generated photographs to elicit interviews with participants in the context of a research contribution course to be effective and enjoyable.

Writing qualitative research is a complex activity. Yet there is relatively little research about novices' experiences in learning to write this genre. The purpose of this multiple case study is to explore the challenges students face when they first encounter the qualitative research paradigm. Drawing upon interviews with students, think-aloud protocols, class observations, and students' written artifacts, this article reveals that major problems new students have include: understanding the qualitative research paradigm, especially the concepts of validity and subjectivity, determining how to carry out a systematic data analysis, becoming familiar with genre knowledge of presenting qualitative findings, and meanwhile, expanding their disciplinary knowledge. Pedagogical implications are also discussed to help student researchers learn better.

In this article, I delve into what it might mean to employ questionnaires without regarding them simply as a way of attempting to discern relationships of correlation or causality between defined variables (as in positivist and post-positivist conceptions of questionnaires). I shall consider the implications of researchers using questionnaires on the basis of alternative paradigmatic orientations. I shall discuss, in particular, interpretivist stances and more constructively-oriented stances (as qualitatively-oriented paradigmatic positions) with reference to different understandings of questionnaire use. I shall also reflect on how qualitative positions that embrace a constructivist epistemological stance can lead to a redirection of questionnaires in relation to more “usual” (post-positivist-directed) usages. In the course of the discussion I make a case, drawing on a version of constructivism, for researchers taking responsibility for their involvement—no matter what methods are used—in the unfolding of the social worlds of which research is a part. Taking into account the constructivist epistemological understanding that questionnaires—as well as other research methods—contribute to the construction of responses rather than merely “finding” responses from research participants, I suggest that some responsibility needs to be taken by those employing questionnaires for the potential social impact of these on research participants as well as wider audiences.

Interviews represent the most common method of collecting qualitative data in both qualitative research and mixed research because, potentially, they provide researchers with opportunities for collecting rich data. Unfortunately, when collecting and analyzing interview data, it appears that researchers tend to pay little attention to describing nonverbal communication data and the role that these data played in the meaning-making process. Thus, in this mixed methods research-based systematic review, we examined the prevalence and use of nonverbal communication data throughout the phases of all qualitative research studies published in a reputable qualitative journal—namely The Qualitative Report—since its inception in 1990 (n = 299) to the mid-year point (i.e., June 30) of 2012—representing approximately 22 years. Overall, nonverbal communication was evidenced in only 24% (N = 299, n = 72) of qualitative research studies involving design and instruments suitable for collection of nonverbal communication. Moreover, the degree of discussion varied greatly from a mere mention to substantive integration and interpretation. Nonverbal discussion was least frequent in the data analysis phase of research and most underutilized in case studies. The essential functions of nonverbal discussion across the stages of research were identified as clarification, juxtaposition, discovery, confirmation, emphasis, illustration, elaboration, complementarity, corroboration and verification, and effect. Implications are discussed.