Advice on writing up a qualitative study.

Some of this applies to writing up any study Abstrac t Your purpose here is to summarise the content of your paper as concisely as you c an, for the benefit of a naive reader (i.e. someone who knows nothing about what youve done). Allow about one (or at most, two) sentenc es each to make the following points: 1. 2. 3. Introduce the general subjec t matter. Introduce the research question. Explain what methods of data c ollec tion and interpretation you used, and explain why you used those methods. 4. Explain what you found 5. Explain what you think this means. Introduc tion Remember that your goal in the introduction is to provide a rationale for your method (e.g. to explain why it is that youre about to do whatever it is that youre about to do). An introduction is not a literature review, but any literature review that you may have written will inform your introduc tion. Link your paragraphs together with c omments which show how your argument for the rationale is developing. Make sure that you: 1. 2. 3. 4. Introduc e the general subjec t matter briefly (a paragraph or two of general context will do). E.g. Relationship break-up is of interest to psychologists because Identify a particular area of interest with referenc e to the academic literature. Use this literature concisely and c ritic ally to develop some picture of the c urrent state of research into your partic ular area. Identify a partic ular issue (one which is problematic in, or absent from, rec ent research) whic h your study will aim to address. Obviously, you will have identified this already, perhaps with some ideas about your preferred approac h in mind, but you still need to make a case for it, for the benefit of your reader. Explain the approach that you are taking to the investigation of this issue, giving due attention to explaining why this particular approach is suitable (this will involve some disc ussion of the theory behind your method - see below). With qualitative work, you wont be very likely to conclude your introduction with a hypothesis (you are not likely to be testing a prediction - instead you are exploring something c onstructions, speec h acts, language use, experience etc ) but you should provide a paragraph whic h summarises your rationale, and re-iterates what it is that you hope to disc over more about - you can think of this as clarifying your researc h question, rather than writing your hypothesis.

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Note that point #5 requires you to introduc e, justify and disc uss your chosen methodology (yes, here - in the introduc tion). With qualitative research there are often two aspec ts to this issue, and they are both crucial. Remember, qualitative is not a method in itself, it just presumes a general focus on differenc es in meaning (rather than on number): Firstly, how will you collect your data? Interviews? Focus groups? Observation? Diaries? Etc. Its possible to be very c reative here, if you have the inclination, but it is very important to explain why you think that your chosen approac h is appropriate to your aims and to the phenomena under investigation. Secondly, how will you interpret your data? Narrative analysis? Interpretative phenomenological analysis? Discourse analysis? Conversation analysis? Grounded theory? Rational choice theory? Etc .

You will need to introduc e a theoretical rationale for your c hosen approach, and again, to explain how it is appropriate to your aims and to the phenomena under investigation. Method. Having explained and justified your c hoic es, you can now give a report of what you actually, did. Make sure that you: Explain how you developed any pre-collection materials (e.g. interview schedule) Explain how you c hose and c ontacted your partic ipants. Explain who your participants were. Explain what instructions and information they were given. Give some indication of your participants responses to the collec tion process (this may involve some reflective comment from you - where there any problems, unforeseen reactions, dilemmas for the researcher etc .? This should lead you to discuss any relevant ethic al issues, too.) 6. Give details of any processes of data treatment (note-taking, transcription, etc.) 7. Explain, how you analysed your data - give enough detail for the reader to understand how you developed your c odes, themes or interpretations. Analysis. This will be muc h more substantial, and much more disc ursive, than the results section of a typic al experimental report. Your purpose here is twofold - you need to give an ac count of your data (to c ommunicate a sense of what it is like) and to offer an interpretation of (to make a c ase for what it means). This should be based upon your codes and/or themes, but there is plenty of sc ope for you to be imaginative in both the way that you choose to structure your analysis sec tion, and in the way that you choose to lay out your evidence. Many of your dec isions will depend on your c hosen approach. Here are some general tips: Struc ture It makes sense to write your analysis section in a way that allows you to move gradually from the descriptive (i.e. identifying key issues on the basis of common themes) to the interpretative (i.e. having identified the key issues, you may then be able to make links between them, to give some sense of their context, and to disc uss any interesting contradictions or underlying c onsistencies in the sorts). N.B At some point during that proc ess you may feel that you are writing your Disc ussion rather than your Analysis, in whic h c ase, do so. If you develop your acc ount in this way, you can tell a story about your data - make sure that you link and develop your points as you go along. A persuasive account Support your ac count of the data with plenty of excerpts, quotes and phrases from the data sourc e. Always give some indic ation of the location of your chosen excerpts (e.g. a transcript and line number). It is important that your argument is persuasive, and that means, firstly, that there is plenty of evidenc e to back it up. Secondly, try to make your case transparent - this means try to make it so that the reader c an see how the data has been coded, how codes have led to themes, and how themes have been incorporated into your interpretative ac count. You c an do this easily by including this kind of information along with most of the quotes that you use. Thus in brac kets along with each quote muc h in the manner of a conventional academic reference - you could inc lude transc ript name/number, line number, and an indication of its c ode and theme. E.g. (Paul, lines 72-88, theme 4, code 4.2.1). N.B. Provide a key for your codes and themes if you choose to number or abbreviate them. The use of quotes also has the advantages of giving the participant a voic e in your research (often an aim of qualitative approac hes), and of offering your reader the c hance to make some validity c hecks of your interpretation of the data against the data itself. Finally there may be ways in which you c an communicate to the reader how extensive your evidence is (e.g. is your theme unique to just one of your partic ipants, is it c ommon ac ross an identifiable sub-group, 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

your theme unique to just one of your partic ipants, is it c ommon ac ross an identifiable sub-group, or is it ac tually found in most of your data?) The third requirement of a persuasive argument is that it is plausible - this means that you have to be careful that you dont take your interpretation too far away from the data. You will be less likely to make this mistake if you are in the habit of showing evidenc e for your claims, but qualitative researc hers often try to show that they have triangulated their claims in some way. This can sometimes mean that you compare the findings using more than one methodological approach (whic h you probably dont have time to do), but it c an also mean that interpretations have been checked with other researc hers (validity c hec k) and/or with the participants themselves (reflexivity c hec k). This isnt a question of finding out whether your interpretation is the right one (other interpretations are always going to be possible), it is simply a question of determining whether it is plausible. Even if you dont have a specific supervisor or a group of c o-researc hers with whom to disc uss your findings, and even if you dont have the time or opportunity to acc ess your participants again, you c an still keep yourself in check by carrying out a few mental exercises. For example, picture yourself presenting your data to a particular member of staff - could you make a c ase for your interpretation, or do you think they would raise more questions than you can answer? Think about how you c ould alter your acc ount to anticipate or deflect any suc h questions. Similarly, ask yourself whether you would feel c omfortable explaining your interpretation to one of your partic ipants. Bear in mind that sometimes (espec ially with more technical approac hes, like CA and DA) this hypothetic al c onversation might be a little difficult anyway, unless your participant is another psychologist. But if you allow for that, and it still seems like you and your participant would have some serious disagreements, then you may need to have a re-think. Of c ourse, this c ould mean toning down your interpretation, but equally, you might be very confident that something interesting occ urs in your partic ipants data whic h they themselves do not appear to have any insight into. This happens sometimes - its what makes psychology interesting - and so you shouldnt abandon it, but you c ould think about how you might show more clearly or persuasively that your interpretation is based firmly upon the data. Whatever you do to address these problems - make it clear to the reader by inc luding a c ouple of examples as you go along. They will increase the readers c onfidence in your acc ount. Disc ussion. Not always necessarily a separate section from the Analysis - you may just move seamlessly through desc ription and interpretation to disc ussion - but these are some of the issues to c onsider. Begin by disc ussing your findings - what do they mean? Relate them back to the problems that you identified in your introduction. Now that you know what you know, c an you add something to your original argument? Contextualise your analysis - what are the implications of your findings for the world out there? It is possible to say plenty of interesting things about your work, even if your study is a single-participant c ase study - just remember that there is a differenc e between generalising from your data to the wider world (which you should not do), and relating your data to the wider world (which you should do). At the very least, you will have identified something about the cultural understanding of a partic ular psyc hologic al phenomena, and this understanding will have come from out there. Evaluate what you have done. Remember that qualitative work does not carry quite the same methodologic al c onc erns as the paradigm (experimental psychology) that you may be more used to dealing with - it is meaningless, for example, to include c omments here about hypotheses, or adequate c ontrol measures. On the other hand, it may be worth considering issues of reflexivity, validity, triangulation or interpretation when you evaluate your findings. Dont just finish - summarise what your discussion in a final paragraph, with some sensible thoughts and pointers for further developments (i.e. not a rec ommendation that the study be repeated with more participants )

Quantitative and qualitative approaches: basic aims and assumptions What is a suitable data collection method? How should I transcribe my data? How can I analyse my data? How can I write my study up? What is reflexivity? What makes a good qualitative report? Useful reading Useful links