in writing a qualitative research report it is common for the researcher to

Qualitative Research Writing

• First Online: 11 November 2020

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• Seyyed-Abdolhamid Mirhosseini 2  

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This chapter focuses on the presentation of qualitative studies in writing. Although not part of the technicalities of the process of inquiry itself, the quality of reporting the process and outcomes of research plays a crucial role in completing the research endeavor. Apart from sharing the research findings, research writing can serve two other purposes. The very attempt at preparing an account of a study to be read by outsiders can help researchers distance themselves from the details of the project and notice the possible shortcomings. Moreover, a transparent presentation of the details of the research process and illustrating the findings in qualitative writing can facilitate corroboration and contribute to the overall process of taking care of the quality of qualitative research. The chapter also briefly addresses publishing qualitative language education research and introduces some related journals.

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Mirhosseini, SA. (2020). Qualitative Research Writing. In: Doing Qualitative Research in Language Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56492-6_10

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31 Writing Up Qualitative Research

Jane F. Gilgun, School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

• Published: 04 August 2014
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This chapter provides guidelines for writing journal articles based on qualitative approaches. The guidelines are part of the tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology and the author’s experience as a writer and reviewer. The guidelines include understanding experiences in context, immersion, interpretations grounded in accounts of informants’ lived experiences, and research as action-oriented. The chapter also covers writing articles that report findings based on ethnographies, autoethnographies, performances, poetry, and photography and other graphic media.

How researchers write up results for journal publications depends on the purposes of the research and the methodologies they use. Some topics are standard, such as statements about methods and methodologies, but how to represent other topics, like related research and theory, reflexivity, and informants’ accounts, may vary. For example, articles based on ethnographic research may be structured differently from writing up research whose purpose is theory development. Journal editors and reviewers often are familiar with variations in style of write-ups, but, when they are not, they may ask for modifications that violate the methodological principles of the research. A common reviewer request is for percentages, which has little meaning in almost all forms of qualitative research because the purpose of the research is to identify patterns of meanings and not distributions of variables. For example, Irvine’s (2013) ethnography of the meanings of pets to homeless people shows a variety of meaning without giving the number of participants from which she drew.

Authors sometimes move easily through the review process, but most often they do not, not only because reviewers might not “get it,” but also because authors have left out, underemphasized, or been less than clear about aspects of their research that reviewers and editors believe are important. Working with editors and reviewers frequently results in improved articles.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide guidelines for writing journal articles based on qualitative approaches. My intended audience is composed of researchers, reviewers for journals, and journal editors. Reviewers for funding agencies may also find this chapter useful. I use the terms “journal article” and “research report” as synonyms, even though some journal articles are not reports of research. I have derived the guidelines from ideas associated with the Chicago School of Sociology and my experience as an author and reviewer. Although the Chicago School was, as Becker (1999) wrote, “open to various ways of doing sociology” (p. 10), the ideas in this chapter are part of the tradition, but they are not representative of the entire tradition. Furthermore, the ideas are not fixed but are open-ended because they evolve over time. I have followed the principles of the Chicago School of Sociology throughout my career, augmented by updates to these ideas, experiments with other traditions, and the sense I make of my own experiences as researcher, author, and reviewer.

The ideas on which I draw include understanding experiences in context, immersion, interpretations grounded in accounts of informants’ lived experiences, and research as action-oriented ( Bulmer, 1984 ; Faris, 1967 ; Gilgun, 1999 d ; 2005 a ; 2012 a ; 2013 b ). To follow these principles, researchers do in-depth studies that take into account the multiple contextual factors that influence meanings and interpretations, seek multiple points of view, and often use multiple methods such as interviews, observations, and document analysis. Researchers do this style of research not only because what they learn is interesting, but because they want to do useful research; that is, research that leads to social actions and even transformations in policies, programs, and interventions. Authors and reviewers pay attention to these principles. Authors convey them in their write-ups, and reviewers look for them as they develop their appraisals.

Excellent writing up of qualitative research matches these principles. In other words, write-ups convey lived experience within multiple contexts, multiple points of view, and analyses that deepen understandings. In addition, if the research is applied, then authors write about how findings may contribute to quality of life. Qualitative researchers from other traditions may follow similar or different guidelines in their write-ups, and I sometimes note other styles of write-ups. Often these variations are related to terminology and not procedures. The reach of the Chicago School of Sociology is wide and deep.

Following these guidelines does not guarantee an easy review process, but this article will be helpful to researchers as they plan and craft their articles and as they respond to reviewers’ and editors’ comments. After almost thirty years of publishing research based on qualitative approaches, almost as many years as a reviewer, and the editing of three collections of qualitative research reports ( Gilgun, Daly, & Handel, 1992 ; Gilgun & Sussman, 1996 : Gilgun & Sands, 2012 ), I am positioned to offer helpful guidelines, not only to authors but also to reviewers and journal editors.

I begin this chapter with a discussion of general principles and then cover the content of typical sections of research reports. Some of the general material fits into various sections of reports, such as methods and findings. In those cases, I do not repeat material already covered and assume that my writing is clear enough so that readers know how the general material fits into particular sections of articles.

Although most of this chapter addresses the writing of conventional research reports, I also cover writing articles that report findings through ethnographies, autoethnographies, performances, poetry, and photography and other graphic media. Ethnographies are based on researchers’ immersion in the field, where they do extensive observations, interviews, and often document analysis (see Block, 2012 ). Geertz’s (1973) notion of “thick description” is associated with ethnographies. Thick description is characterized by research reports that show the matrix of meanings that researchers identify and attempt to represent in their reports. Autoethnographies are in-depth reflective accounts of individual lives that the narrators themselves write ( Ellis, 2009 ). Ethnographies and autoethnographies involve reflections on meanings, contexts, and other wider influences on individual lives. They are studies of intersections of individual lives and wider cultural themes and practices. Reports of these types of research can look different from conventional research reports in that they appear less formal; the usual sections of methods, literature review, findings, and analysis may have different names; and the sections may be in places that fit the logical flow of the research and not the typical structure of introductory material, methods, results, and discussion. Despite these superficial differences, researchers who write these kinds of articles seek to deepen understandings and hope to move audiences to action through conveying lived experience in context and through multiple points of view. They also typically seek transformations of persons and societies. Links between these forms of research and Chicago School traditions are self-evident.

Some General Principles

Research reports that have these characteristics depend on the quality of the data on which the reports are based, the quality of the analysis, and the skills of researchers in conveying the analysis concisely and with “grab” ( Glaser, 1978 ), which means writing that is vivid and memorable ( Gilgun, 2005 b ). Grab brings findings to life. With grab, human experiences jump off the page. Priority is given to the voices of research participants, whom I call informants, with citations and the wisdom of other researchers providing important contextual information. The voices and analyses of researchers do not dominate ( Gilgun, 2005 c ), except in some articles whose purpose is theory development or the presentation of a theory. Researcher analyses often are important, especially in putting forth social action recommendations that stem from the experiences of informants.

A well-done report shows consistency between research traditions and the writing-up of research. For example, reflexivity statements, writing with grab, and copious excerpts from fieldnotes, interviews, and documents of various sorts are consistent with phenomenological approaches whose emphasis is on lived experience and interpretations that informants make of their experiences. Researchers new to qualitative research, however, often mix their traditions without realizing it, which works when the traditions are compatible. When the traditions are not compatible, the write-ups can be confusing and even contradictory ( Gilgun, 2005 d ). Some authors may write in distanced, third-person styles while attempting to convey informants’ lived experiences. These scholars may, therefore, have difficulty getting their articles accepted. Hopefully, this chapter will facilitate the writing of research reports that show consistency across their many parts and save scholars from rejections of work over which they have taken much care.

Details on These General Principles

In this section, I provide more detail on writing up qualitative research. I begin with a discussion of the need for high-quality data, high-quality analysis, and grab. I then move on to the details of the report, such as the place of prior research and theory, contents of methods sections, organization of findings, and the balance between descriptive material and authors’ interpretations. Dilemmas abound. Writing up qualitative research is not for the faint of heart.

High-Quality Data

Since qualitative researchers seek to understand the subjective experiences of research informants in various contexts, high-quality data result in large part from the degree that researchers practice immersion and to the degree that both researchers and informants develop rapport and engage with each other. Through active engagement, informants share their experiences with the kind of detail that brings their experiences to life. How to develop rapport is beyond the scope of this article, but openness and acceptance of whatever informants say are fundamental to engagement. Interviewers do not have to agree with the values that informants’ accounts convey, as when I interview murderers and rapists ( Gilgun, 2008 ), but we do maintain a neutrality that allows the dialogue to continue ( Gilgun & Anderson, 2013 ). The content of interviews is not about us and our preferences, but about understanding informants.

Prolonged engagement can result in quality data. In interview research, prolonged engagement allows for informants’ multiple perspectives to emerge, including inconsistencies, contradictions, ambiguities, and ambivalences. In addition, prolonged engagement facilitates the kind of trust needed for informants to share personal, sensitive information in detail, which are the kinds of data that qualitative researchers seek. Prolonged engagement also gives researchers time to reflect on what they are learning and experiencing through the interviews. This provides opportunities to develop new understandings and test new understandings through subsequent research. Their understandings thus deepen and broaden. Informants, too, can reflect, reconsider, and deepen the accounts they share.

Prolonged engagement means in-depth interviews, typically multiple interviews of more than an hour each. As mentioned earlier, time between interviews allows researchers and informants to reflect on the previous interview and prepare for the next. Researchers can do background reading, discuss emerging ideas with others, and formulate pertinent new questions. Informants may retrieve long-forgotten memories and interpretations through interviews. If they have only one interview, they have no opportunity to share with researchers the material that arises after the single interview is concluded.

There are exceptions to multiple interviews as necessary for immersion and high-quality data. When researchers have expertise in interviewing and when the topic is focused, one interview of between ninety minutes to two hours could provide some depth. Even under these conditions, however, more than one interview is ideal. I did a study that involved one ninety-minute interview with perpetrators of child sexual abuse in order to understand the circumstances under which their abusive behaviors became known to law enforcement. Thus, the interview was focused. The interviewees were volunteers who had talked about the topic many times in the course of their involvement in sex abuse treatment programs. They shared their stories with depth and breadth. I, too, was well-prepared. By then, I had had about twenty-five years of experience interviewing people about personal, sensitive topics. The informants provided accounts not only because the topic was focused, but because they were willing to share and I was willing to listen and to ask questions about their sexually abusive behaviors. With one interview, however, I knew relatively little about their social histories and general worldviews. Thus, I did not have the specifics necessary to place their accounts into context. The material they provided remained valuable and resulted in one publication ( Sharma & Gilgun, 2008 ) and others in planning stages. I prefer two or more interviews because of the importance of contextual data.

In observational studies, prolonged engagement means that researchers do multiple observations over time to obtain the nuances and details that compose human actions. Observational studies often have interview components and also may have document analysis as well. In document analysis, prolonged engagement means researchers base their analyses on an ample storehouse of documents and not just flit in and out of the documents. The quality of document analysis depends on whether the analysis shows multiple perspectives, patterns, and variations within patterns. Ethnographies have these characteristics. Block’s (2012) ethnographic research on AIDS orphans in Lesotho, Africa, is an example of a well-done ethnography.

Sample Size

In principle, the size of the sample and the depth of the interview affect whether researchers can claim immersion. The more depth and breadth each case in a study has, the smaller the sample size can be. For example, researchers can engage in immersion through a single in-depth case study when they do multiple interviews and if multiple facets of the case are examined. Case studies are investigations of single units. The case can be composed of an individual, a couple, a family, a group, a nation, or a region. Single case studies are useful in the illustration, development, and testing of theories, as well as in in-depth descriptions.

The more focused the questions, the larger the sample will be. A study on long-term marriage would require a minimum of two or three interviews because the topic is complicated. The sample would include at least ten participants and up to twenty or thirty, depending on the number of interviews, to account for some of the many patterns that are likely to emerge in a study of a topic this complex. In the one-interview study I did of how sexual abuse came to the notice of law enforcement, one interview was adequate because of the tight focus of the question. Yet, I used a sample size of thirty-two to maximize the possibility of identifying a variety of patterns, which the study accomplished. As mentioned, the one interview, however, did not allow me to contextualize the stories the informants told. Fortunately, I have another large sample that involved multiple, in-depth interviews in which informants discussed multiple contexts over time. This other study was helpful to me in understanding the accounts from the single-interview study.

Recruitment can be difficult. When it is, researchers may not be able to obtain an adequate sample. For example, a sample of seven participants engaging in a single sixty- to ninety-minute interview may not provide enough data on which to base a credible analysis. In a similar vein, articles based on a single or even a few focus groups may not provide enough depth to be informative. Some depth is possible if, in a single-interview study of less than fifteen or twenty interviewees, researchers meet with informants a second time to go over what researchers understand about informants’ accounts. This sometimes is called member-checking , and it provides additional data on which to base the analysis. In summary, the more depth and breadth to a study, the smaller the sample size can be—even as small as one or two—depending on the questions and the complexity of the cases.

Quality of the Analysis

A quality analysis begins with initial planning of the research and continues until the article is accepted for publication. An excellent research report has transparency , meaning the write-up is clear in what researchers did, how they did it, and why. I often tell students they can do almost anything reasonable and ethical, as long as they make a clear account in the write-up.

During planning, some researchers identify those concepts that they can use as sensitizing concepts once in the field. Transparency about the sources of sensitizing concepts characterizes well-done reports. The sources are literature reviews and reflexivity statements. Most researchers, however, have only a limited awareness of the importance of being clear about the sources of sensitizing concepts and other notions that become part of research coding schemes. Sensitizing concepts are notions that researchers identify before beginning their research and that help researchers notice and name social processes that they might not have noticed otherwise ( Blumer, 1986 ). Other researchers wait until data analysis to begin to identify concepts that they may use as codes and that may also become core concepts that organize findings. Either approach is acceptable and depends on purpose and methodologies.

During data collection, researchers reflect on what they are learning, typically talk to other researchers about their emerging understandings, and read relevant research and theory to enlarge and deepen their understandings. Researchers also keep fieldnotes that are a form of reflection. Based on their various reflections, researchers can reformulate interview and research questions and formulate new ones, do within—and across—case comparisons while in the field, and develop new insights into the meanings of the material.

Also, while in the field, researchers identify promising patterns of meanings and identify tentative core concepts, sometimes called categories , which are ideas that organize the copious material that they amass. Once researchers identify tentative core concepts, they seek to test whether they hold up, and, when they do, they further develop the patterns and concepts. Sometimes researchers think they have “struck gold” when they identify a possible core concept or pattern, only to find that the data—or metaphorical vein of gold—peter out (Phyllis Stern, personal communication, November 2002). They then go on to identify and follow-up on other concepts and patterns that show promise of becoming viable.

Core concepts become viable when researchers are able to dimensionalize them ( Schatzman, 1991 ) through selective coding ( Corbin & Strauss, 2008 ). This means that researchers have found data that show the multiple facets of concepts, such as patterns and exceptions to any general patterns. Authors may use other terms to describe what they did, such as thematic analysis. What is important is to describe the processes and produces; and what researchers call them is of less importance.

Core concepts may begin as sensitizing concepts. Researchers sometimes identify, name, and code core concepts through notions that are part of their general stores of knowledge but were not part of the literature review or reflexivity statement. Glaser (1978) called the practice “theoretical sensitivity.” The names researchers choose may be words or phrases informants have used. However derived, core concepts are central to the organization of findings ( Gilgun, 2012 a ).

At some point, data collection stops, but analysis does not. Researchers carry analysis that occurred in the field into the next phases of the research. Immersion at this point means that researchers read and code transcripts of interviews, observations, and any documentary material they find useful. They carry forward the core concepts they identified in the field. An example of a core concept is “resilience,” which in my own research organized a great deal of interview material. The concept of resilience has been an organizing idea in several of the articles I have written and plan to write ( Gilgun, 1996 a ; 1996 b ; 2002 a ; 2002 b ; 2004 a ; 2004 b ; 2005 a ; 2006 , 2008 ; 2010 ; Gilgun & Abrams, 2005 ; Gilgun, Keskinen, Marti, & Rice, 1999 ; Gilgun, Klein, & Pranis, 2000 ).

Corbin and Strauss (2008) stated that selective coding helps researchers to decide if a concept can become a core concept, meaning it organizes a great deal of data that have multiple dimensions. An example of dimensionalization is a study of social workers in Australia whose clients were Aboriginal people. The researchers identified several core concepts, among them critical self-awareness ( Bennet, Zubrzycki, & Bacon, 2011 ). The dimensions of critical self-awareness included understanding motivations to work with Aboriginal people, fears of working with Aboriginal people, and personalization and internalization of the anger that some Aboriginal people express.

Like many other researchers, Bennet et al. (2011) were not working within an explicit Chicago School tradition. They therefore do not use terms such as core concepts, dimensionalization, and selective coding. Instead, they described their procedures as thematic analysis, conceptual mapping, and a search for meaning. However, they did use the term “saturation,” which is part of the Chicago School tradition.

A single core concept or multiple related core concepts compose research reports. The Bennet et al. (2011) article, for example, linked multiple core concepts. The authors showed how critical self-awareness leads to meaningful relationships that in turn connect to “acquiring Aboriginal knowledge” (p. 30).

With viable core concepts and rich data, researchers are positioned to present their findings in ways that are memorable and interesting; that is, with “grab” ( Glaser, 1978 ). “Grab” requires compelling descriptive material: excerpts from interviews, field notes, and various types of documents, as well as researchers’ paraphrases of these materials. An example of a research report with grab is Irvine’s (2013) account of her study of the meanings of pets to homeless people. She provided vivid descriptions of her interactions with the participants and compelling quotes that show what pets mean. Here, an example from Denise’s account of her relationship with her cat Ivy:

I have a history with depression up to suicide ideation, and Ivy, I refer to her as my suicide barrier. And I don’t say that in any light way. I would say, most days, she’s the reason why I keep going.... She is the only source of daily, steady affection and companionship that I have. (p. 19)

These and other quotes, as well as Irvine’s well-written, detailed descriptive material, show what grab means.

Grab equates with excellence in writing. Irvine’s (2013) article is an example. In terms of the grab of her article, her work is in the Chicago School tradition. She wrote in the first person. She told complete stories in which she quoted extensively from the interviews, described the persons she interviewed and the settings in which she interviewed them, and provided biographical sketches. Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, both of whom trained generations of graduate students in qualitative research at the University of Chicago in the first quarter of the twentieth century, held seminars on the use of literary techniques, such as those used in novels and autobiographies, in writing up research ( Bulmer, 1984 ; Gilgun, 1999 d ; 2012 a ). These educators wanted researchers to report on their “first-hand observation.” Park told a class of graduate students to

[g]o and sit in the lounges of the luxury hotels and on the doorsteps of the flophouses; sit on the Gold Coast settees and on the slum shakedowns; sit in the Orchestra Hall and in the Star and Garter Burlesk. In short, gentlemen [sic], go get the seat of your pants dirty. ( McKinney, 1966 , p. 71)

Park suggested to Pauline Young (1928 ; 1932) to “think and feel” like the residents of Russian Town, the subject of her dissertation, published in 1932 ( Faris, 1967 ). Irvine’s work shows these qualities. She immersed herself in the settings, she conducted in-depth interviews, and she conveyed her first-hand experiences in vivid terms.

The Chicago School also encouraged students to write in the first person. A good example is a report by Dollard (1937) , who was concerned about the racial practices of the Southern town where he was doing fieldwork. He said he was afraid that other white people watched as he talked to “Negroes” on his front porch, when he knew that custom regarding the “proper” place of “Negroes” was at the back door. He wrote

My Negro friend brought still another Negro up on the porch to meet me. Should we shake hands? Would he be insulted if I did not, or would he accept the situation? I kept my hands in pockets and did not do it, a device that was often useful in resolving such a situation. (p. 7)

This description is a portrait of a pivotal moment in Dollard’s fieldwork, and it is full of connotations about the racist practices of the time ( Gilgun, 1999 d ; 2012 a ).

Irvine (2013) also wrote in the first person. Here’s an example:

I met Trish on a cold December day in Boulder. She stood on the median at the exit of a busy shopping center with her Jack Russell Terrier bundled up in a dog bed beside her. She was “flying a sign,” or panhandling, with a piece of cardboard neatly lettered in black marker to read, “Sober. Doing the best I can. Please help.” (p. 14)

These two excerpts illustrate a methodological point Small (1916) made in his chapter on the first fifty years of sociological research in the United States: namely, the importance of going beyond “technical treatises” and providing first-person “frank judgments” that can help future generations interpret sociology. Without such contexts, “the historical significance of treatises will be misunderstood” (p. 722). Throughout his chapter, Small wrote in the first-person and provided his views—or frank judgments—on the events he narrated. From then until now, research reports in the Chicago tradition are vivid and contextual, conveying to the extent possible what it was like to be persons in situations.

There are many other examples of well-done research reports. Eck’s (2013) article on never-married men includes the basic elements that are present in almost all reports based on qualitative methods. It is transparent in its procedures, situated within scholarly traditions, well-organized, vivid, and instructive both for those new to qualitative research and for long-term researchers like me. The other articles I cite in this chapter also show many desirable qualities in research reports.

Research Report Sections

The main sections of standard reports based on qualitative methods are the same as for articles based on other types of methods: Introduction, Methods, Findings, and Discussion. The American Psychological Association (APA) manual (2009) provides information on what goes into each of these sections. Research reports in sociology journals follow a similar format, although the citation style is slightly different. The American Sociological Association uses first and last names in the reference section, a practice I support. In articles based on qualitative approaches, researchers sometimes change the names of sections, add or omit some, or reorder them. When changes are made, the general guideline is whether the changes make sense and are consistent with the purpose of the research. As Saldaña (2003) pointed out, researchers choose how to present their findings on the basis of credibility, vividness, and persuasive qualities and not for the sake of novelty. Because some articles report findings as fictionalized accounts, poetry, plays, songs, and performances (including plays), it makes sense that the sections on these findings vary from the standard format that I discuss here.

Although there are no rigid rules about how to write journal articles based on qualitative research, much depends on the methodological perspectives, purposes of the research, and the editorial guidelines of particular journals. For example, if researchers want to develop a theory, it is important to be clear from the beginning of the article to state this as the purpose of the research. The entire article should then focus on how the authors developed the theory. Research and theory cited in the literature review should have direct relevance to the substantive area on which the authors theorized. The methods section should explain what the researchers did to develop the theory. The findings section should begin with a statement of the theory that the researchers developed. The rest of the findings section should usually be composed of three parts. The first is composed of excerpts from those data that support the concepts of the theory. This is the grounding of the theory in something clear and concrete. The second is the authors’ thinking or interpretation of the meanings of each of the concepts. The third is an analysis of how the theory contributes to what is already known, such as how the findings elaborate on and call into question what is known. Thus, a research report on the development of a theory should contain a lot of scholarship that others have developed.

A report based on narrative principles or one based on an ethnography should contain copious excerpts from interviews, citing less scholarship than an article whose purpose is to develop theory. However, it is good practice to bring in related research and theory in the results section when this literature helps in interpretation, when findings have connections to other bodies of thought, and when findings are facets of a larger issue. In my now older publication on incest perpetrators ( Gilgun, 1995 ), the editors suggested that I show that when therapists engage in sexual relationships with clients, they are engaging in abuses of power similar to those of incest perpetrators. I was at first indignant that the editors wanted me to do even more work on the article, but I soon was glad they did. It is important to show that incest or any human phenomenon is not isolated from other phenomenon but is part of a larger picture. Doing so fit my purposes, which was to show how to do theory-testing/theory-guided qualitative research. Showing how findings fit into related research and theory is part of this type of research.

Whenever researchers are ready to submit an article for publication, it is wise to read recent issues of journals in which they would like to publish. If they can identify an article whose structure, methodologies, and general purpose are similar to theirs, they could study how those authors presented their material. If, for example, in a report on narrative research, the introductory material is relatively brief, and the findings and discussion sections compose most of the pages, researchers would do well to format their articles in similar ways. I study journals in which I have interest and model much of my own articles after those published in these journals. I make sure, however, that I cover topics that in my judgment are important to cover.

Prior Research and Theory

In my experience, something as simple as the place of prior research and theory can get complicated in the writing of reports based on qualitative research, even when the purpose of the article is primarily descriptive and is not to construct an explicit theory. In general, related research and theory literature can be presented at the beginning of a report as part of a review of pertinent research and theory, in the findings section when prior work helps in the interpretation and analysis of findings, or in the discussion section, where authors may reflect on how their findings add to, undermine, or correct what is known and even add something new.

Readers expect and journal editors typically want articles to begin with literature review, with some exceptions. A perusal of journals that publish qualitative studies shows this. Yet there are exceptions. Valásquez (2011) began her report on her encounter with scientology with an extended and rather meandering first-person narrative. Her literature review began toward the end of the article. She tailored the review to the report that preceded it. In this article and others, the literature review helped in the interpretation of findings and helped to situate the report in its scholarly contexts. In other articles, the literature review appears in the introductory section. This sets the scholarly context of the research, highlights the significance of topics, and identifies gaps in knowledge. Neither authors nor reviewers should have rigid expectations about where the scholarship of others belongs. It belongs where it makes the most sense and has the most impact.

For many, the placement of literature reviews seems self-evident. Yet, some well-known approaches, such as grounded theory, can set authors up for confusion about where the literature review belongs. This can result in delays in writing up their results. The procedures of grounded theory are open-ended and designed to find new aspects of phenomena—often underresearched—and then develop theories from the findings. At the outset of their work, researchers cannot anticipate what they will find. Therefore, teachers such as Strauss and Glaser advised students not to do literature reviews until they had identified basic social processes that become the focus of the research ( Covan, 2007 ; Glaser & Strauss, 1967 ).

How, then, do researchers write up research reports when they are doing an open-ended study that, by definition, will culminate in unanticipated findings? Do they write their reports as records on how they proceeded chronologically, or do they follow APA style and the dominant tradition that says the literature review comes first? For the most part, I follow the tradition, as, apparently, do most researchers. However, to structure reports in this way sometimes feels strained and artificial. I would prefer to write a more chronological account, in which I can share with readers the lines of inquiry and procedures I followed. The literature review at the beginning of the report, therefore, would be brief. The methods section is quite detailed in how I went about developing the theory. The findings section would have the three-part format I discussed earlier: statement of the theory, presentations of excerpts that support assertions that certain concepts compose the theory, my interpretation of the meanings of the concepts and the excerpts that support them, and then the use of related research and theory to further develop the theory and to situate it in its scholarly traditions.

In all but one of the research reports that I have published, I did the literature after I had identified findings. The one exception was research I did based on the method of analytic induction, in which researchers can use literature reviews to focus their research from the outset ( Gilgun, 1995 , 2007 ). In this research, I used concepts from theories on justice and care to analyze transcripts of interviews I had previously conducted on how perpetrators view child sexual abuse. Even though I was familiar with the transcripts, I found that the concepts of justice and care and their definitions sensitized me to see things in the material that I had not noticed as I did data collection and during previous analyses of the data.

Furthermore, in writing up the results, I brought in research that was not part of the literature review to help me to interpret findings and to show how findings fit with and added to what was already known. I did not place this material in the introductory literature review. Placing related research and theory as parts of the results and discussion sections is common and may be necessary in articles that are reporting on a theory that the authors developed. For descriptive studies whose purpose is not theory-building, such as ethnographies, some findings sections include the addition of research and theory not present in the introductory section. Often, however, authors do not follow this pattern. An example is found in Ahmed (2013) , who described how migrants experience settling into a new country. She presents excerpts from interviews and her interpretation of them, including organizing them into a typology, but she does not bring additional research and theory into her interpretations.

Tensions can arise between how much space to give to literature reviews and how much to allot to presentation of informants’ accounts/findings ( Gilgun, 2005 c ). This happened in the most recent article I co-wrote, which is on mothers’ perspectives on the signs of child sexual abuse ( Gilgun & Anderson, 2013 ). We believed the literature review was important because it not only set up our research but summarized a great deal of information that was important to our intended audience of social service professionals. We also wanted to anticipate the expectations of reviewers and the journal editor. Yet, we put much effort into making the literature review as concise as possible in order to have reasonable space for findings. We wrote the literature review before we did data analysis. When we wrote up the results, the first draft was probably three times longer than any journal article could be.

We had written case studies first to be sure that we understood each case in detail. We had wanted to share what the women said in the kind of detail that had helped us deepen our own understandings, so we cut back on the case material. The article was still too long. We decided to exclude the few instances we had in which women knew of the abuse but tried to handle it themselves or did not believe the children when told. We did more summarizing of the literature review. We eliminated many references.

After much effort, we finally had a manuscript that was the required length of twenty-two pages. It included a literature review that set up the research in good form, an adequate accounting of the method, and findings that conveyed with grab the complexities of the signs and lack of signs of child sexual abuse. We wove points made in the literature review into our interpretations, yet we had to leave out important patterns for the sake of space. The editor’s decision was a revise and resubmit, which we did. The main recommendation was to elaborate on applications. This was a great suggestion, and we dug deep to think about this. We are pleased with the results. We had to do further reading on topics we had not anticipated at the onset of our project, and we squeezed in a few new citations in the discussion section that related to implications of the research. This additional material greatly enhanced the meanings and usefulness of the research.

There is much more to say about qualitative research and literature reviews. Sometimes researchers get stuck, as I have more than once. I have research that I have not yet published because I have been unable to figure out how to do the multiple literature reviews I think I must show how my theory builds on, adds to, and challenges what is already known. I have written up this research as conference papers, where expectations about literature reviews are more relaxed ( Gilgun, 1996c , 1998 , 1999c , 2000 ). One of these. papers was on a comprehensive theory of interpersonal violence ( Gilgun, 2000 ). I wanted to write my theory first and then show how the findings contribute to what is already known. Doing so doesn’t seem so outlandish today, and I now can imagine writing it up exactly as I would want to. At the same time, I wonder if I would? I really don’t know if any journal that would publish a theory of violence would also accept an article that places a literature review after findings. Furthermore, my writing up of the theory would take so many pages that I would not have enough space to do a comprehensive literature review. As of today, the theory I am developing has links to sixteen or more bodies of literature. No way can I publish a journal-length article that will accommodate that much research and theory!

So, here I am, many years into the development of a comprehensive theory, still reflecting on how to create journal articles out of my analysis. I have published many articles in social media outlets exploring ideas that are the basis for the theory. I have put these articles into collections that are available on the internet ( Gilgun, 2012 b ; 2012 c ; 2013 a ). The theory is so complex that writing bits and pieces over the years and having a place to put them have been very helpful.

Finally, some articles may cite few if any related research and theory. This may fit articles whose purpose is to convey lived experience that stands on its own. These articles feature performances, plays, autoethnographies, fictionalized accounts, poetry, and song, among others. Egbe (2013) wrote two poems that she explained were accounts of her experiences of doing research in Nigeria with young smokers. She said she was “dazed by the vast opportunity this method gives a researcher to dig deep into a research problem and be submerged into the world of participants” (p. 353). Her two-page article is composed of two poems and her explanation. The article showed grab, evidence of immersion, experiences in contexts, and multiple perspectives. Her work, therefore, followed well-established guidelines for writing up qualitative research. Egbe not only omitted a literature review, but she did not write about how to use the results of her research, assuming that its uses are self-evident. Obviously, she thought a literature review unnecessary; the reviewers and journal editors agreed with her.

Reflexivity Statements

A growing number of journals encourage researchers to include reflexivity statements in research reports. Researchers may place these in the introductory material of an article, after the literature review and before the methods section; this probably is the most important place to put them because reflexivity statements often influence the focus and design of the research, including the choice of sensitizing concepts and codes. Reflexivity statements may also appear in the methods and findings and methods sections when important. Reflexivity statements are accounts of researchers’ experiences with the topic of research; accounts of their expectations regarding informant issues and their relationships to informants, especially in regard to power differentials and other ethical concerns; and accounts of their reflections on various issues related to possible experiences that informants may have had. They also may include the experience they had while participating in the research ( D’Cruz, Gillingham, & Melendez, 2007 ; Presser, 2005 ). My article on doing research on violence is an extended reflexivity statement ( Gilgun, 2008 ). There appears to be no standard content for reflexivity statements and no standard places for them to appear. Personal and professional experiences and reflections on power differentials may be the emergent standard. Whatever decisions researchers make about reflexivity statements, they alert audiences to researchers’ perspectives, which can be helpful to readers as they attempt to make sense of research reports.

An example of a reflexivity statement is found in Winter (2010) work. Winter is a practitioner turned researcher who had a previous relationship as a guardian ad litem with the children with whom she later conducted the research that she was reporting. Winter was reflexive about the implications of her prior relationship with these children. I imagine, based on my own experience, that she put only a fraction of her thinking into her article. Not only did she write in her reflexivity statement that she had a prior relationship with the children, but she also wrote about the ethical issues involved.

Ethical issues have a place in reflexivity statements. I have run into ethical questions over the course of my research career. One situation that stands out is the encounter I had with a mother and her eleven-year-old daughter who had participated in my dissertation research on child sexual abuse ( Gilgun, 1983 ). The mother cried and told her daughter how sorry she was that she had been unable to protect her from sexual abuse. The girl was touched but did not seem to know what to do. I suggested that she go stand by her mother. When she got close, the mother and daughter hugged each other and cried. This is a significant event with ethical implications that I included in the findings section of my dissertation and in a subsequent research report ( Gilgun, 1984 ). The ethical issue is, first, whether I should have stepped out of my role as detached researcher and guided the girl to go to her mother, and, second, whether I should have made my blurring of boundaries public by publishing them.

As far as the placement of reflexivity statements, the initial statement has a logical location after the literature review because the reflexivity statement contributes to the development of the research questions, the identification of sensitizing concepts, the interview schedule, and the overall design of research procedures. Accounts of ongoing reflexivity could be part the findings section and of the discussion section. Reflexivity statements are not a standard part of research reports, but they can contribute to readers’ understandings of the research.

Along with the literature review, reflexivity statements contribute to practical and applied significance statements and may also help to identify gaps in knowledge. Literature reviews and reflexivity statements contain key concepts. The concepts that researchers define at the end of introductory sections typically become codes during analysis, although researchers may not label the concepts as codes either in the introductory section or in the methods section. I am unsure why such labeling has not become routine. When concepts carry the label code , this clarifies where codes come from. Without naming codes and stating where they come from, much of analysis is mystified. Many reports read as if the codes appear out of nowhere during analysis. Even Glaser’s (1978) notion of theoretical sensitivity mystifies the origins of codes. How, for example, do researchers become theoretically sensitive? What if researchers are beginning their scholarly careers? How theoretically sensitive are they ( Covan, 2007 )? What are the implications for the quality of the analysis?

Research Questions, Hypotheses, and Definitions

The final part of the introductory section of a research report is devoted to research questions, hypotheses to be tested (if any), and definitions of core concepts. In general, in qualitative research, hypotheses are statements of relationships between concepts. Theories usually are composed of two or more hypotheses, although, at times, some researchers may use the term theory to designate a single hypothesis ( Gilgun, 2005 b ). Concepts are extractions from concrete data. Sometimes concepts are called second-order concepts and data first-order concepts .

Research questions may be absent. In their place are purpose statements that make the focus of the report clear. Hypotheses are rarely present in qualitative research. When they are, the purpose of the research is to test them and typically to develop them more fully. This type of research has in the past been called analytic induction ( Gilgun, 1995 e), whereas a more up-to-date version of qualitative hypothesis testing and theory-guided research is called deductive qualitative analysis ( Gilgun, 2005 d ; 2013 ). Analytic induction and deductive qualitative analysis are part of the Chicago School tradition.

Methods Section

Most methods sections for reports based on qualitative approaches have the same elements as any other research report. Descriptions of the sample, recruitment, interview schedule, and plans for data analysis are standard. The APA manual provides guidelines ( American Psychological Association, 2009 ) that fit many types of qualitative research reports. However, reports based on autoethnographies, poetry, and performances may have brief or no methods sections. As is clear by now, the report’s contents depend on the purposes and methodologies of the research and on the editorial requirements of journals.

Accounts of Methodologies

In writing up qualitative research, methods sections usually contain a brief overview of the research methodology, which is the set of principles that guided the research. The following is an account of the methodology used in a research report on cancer treatment in India:

For this project we drew upon interpretive traditions within qualitative research. This involved us taking an in-depth exploratory approach to data collection, aimed at documenting the subjective and complex experiences of the respondents. Our aim was to achieve a detailed understanding of the varying positions adhered to, and to locate those within a broader spectrum underlying beliefs and/or agendas. ( Broom & Doron, 2013 , p. 57)

Sometimes, statements of methodology are much more elaborate, but in research reports, such a statement is sufficient, again depending on the editorial policies of particular journals. A few citations, which this article had, round out an adequate statement of methodology.

However, many reports are written in a clear and straightforward way with scant or no account of methodologies. Examples are the work of Eck (2013) and Spermon, Darlington, and Gibney (2013) . These kinds of well-done write-ups might eventually be considered generic. Spermon et al. said their study was phenomenological, which sets up assumptions that the report will be primarily descriptive. In actuality, the intent was to develop theory. Such mixing of methodologies may be the wave of the future; in many ways, distinctions between phenomenological studies whose purposes are descriptive and those whose purposes are to build theory are blurred. Such blurring may have been the case for decades because it is possible and often desirable to build theories based on phenomenological perspectives; that is, in-depth descriptions of lived experience. However, authors are wise to state in one place what their methodologies are and how they put them to use, such as for descriptive purposes or for theory-building.

Description of Sample

Placing descriptions of sample size and the demographics of the sample in the methods sections is typical. As mentioned earlier, evaluation of sample size depends on the depth and breadth of the study. The more depth a study has, the smaller the number of cases can be. The more breadth and the sharper the focus, the larger sample sizes typically are. Samples on which a study is based must provide enough material on which to base a credible article. A sample size of one may be adequate if researchers show their work demonstrates the basic principles of almost all forms of qualitative research: perspectives of persons who participate in the research, researcher immersion into the settings or the life stories of persons interviewed, multiple perspectives, contextual information of various types, and applications. Autoethnographies often have an n of one, but joint autoethnographies are possible. Ethnographies may not give a sample size, as was the case in the performance ethnography of Valásquez (2011) who wrote in the first person about her experience with scientology. In her first-person ethnography, Irvine (2013) also did not mention sample size. She said that the narratives she used for the article were from a larger study on the meanings of animals to people who have no homes. She did not describe the usual demographics of age, gender, social class, and ethnicity.

Most articles describe the demographics of the sample. In a recently accepted article ( Gilgun & Anderson, 2013 ), I saw no relevance in mentioning the size of the larger sample from which we drew in order to tell the stories of how mothers responded to their learning that their husbands or life partners had sexually abused their children. We included an exact count of the larger sample because we assumed that it would be the journal’s expectations. We also gave particulars of the demographics. Except for social class and ethnicity, we saw little relevance for the other descriptors. These status variables were relevant to us because most of the sample was white and middle or upper class. This is important because much research on child sexual abuse is done with poor people, and there are stereotypes that poor families and families of color are more likely to experience incest than are white middle and upper class families. Overall, as with some other issues related to writing, the adequacy of the sample description depends on the methodological principles of the research and the journal’s editorial policies.

Recruitment

Accounts of recruitment procedures are important because researchers want to show that their work is ethical. Respect for the autonomy or freedom of choice of participants needs to be demonstrated. In addition, often the persons in whose lives we are interested have vulnerabilities. To show that the research procedures have not exploited these vulnerabilities is part of ethical considerations. Most articles have these accounts. Furthermore, when there are accounts of recruitment procedures, it becomes obvious why the sample is not randomly selected. Irvine’s (2013) account of recruitment is exemplary. She recruited through veterinary clinics that took care of the pets of homeless persons. She did not approach potential participants herself. Doing so risked making refusals difficult. The staff informed persons of the research and its purposes. If individuals said they were interested, they gave permission for the staff to give their names to researchers. The research interviews took place in the clinics.

The ethics of recruitment revolve around values, such as respect for autonomy, dignity, and worth. Other ethical issues that are important to mention in reports include the use of incentives for participation. Although many human subjects committees now require monetary incentives for participation, this has ethical implications. Irvine (2013) solved this by giving gift cards after the interviews were completed. Reports on ethical issues have a place in methods sections.

Data Collection and Analysis

Accounts of data collection and analysis are part of the methods section. Data collection procedures should be detailed for many reasons. Primary among them is the need for transparency in terms of the ethical standards the researchers followed, as well as the need to allow for replication of the study. Such details also provide guidelines for others who might be interested in using the methods. In addition, there are many different schools of thought and procedures for each of the methods used with the three general types of data collection: interviews, observations, and documents. It is helpful to state which particular data collection procedures the researchers used. Researchers often provide examples of the kinds of questions asked and procedures used for recording observations and excerpts from documents. Some researchers may omit such an accounting, as with some autoethnographies and articles that turn research material into performances.

How researchers analyzed data is part of the methods sections. As with data collection, there are so many types of analysis that researchers need to describe the particular forms that they used. For figuring out how to report on data analysis, researchers would do well to study articles in journals in which they want to publish. Irvine (2013) used a method of analysis I have never heard of called “personal narrative analysis” (p. 8). She gave enough detail to provide the general idea of what she did and a sufficient number of citations for additional information.

The level of detail can vary. In some sociology journals, for example, researchers may say little about analysis and sometimes little about data collection. This is because the journal editors, reviewers, and those who publish in and read the articles have assumptions that they for the most part take for granted. Even in these journals, however, researchers may want to account for their analytic procedures, especially if they are writing on topics outside of what is usual in such journals.

Other journals require a great deal of detail. In those instances, researchers first decide what they think is essential and then shape their accounts to fit what appears to be usual practice in the journal. The following paragraphs describe data analysis in a recently accepted article on signs of child sexual abuse in families ( Gilgun & Anderson, 2013 ).

Data Analysis

In the analysis of data, the first author read the transcripts multiple times and coded them for instances related to disclosures of child sexual abuse and associated signs of the abuse, such as how and when the women first learned of the abuse or suspected it was occurring in their families, their responses, and their reflections on the signs of abuse they might have missed, as well as child and perpetrator behaviors that they did not realize were related to child sexual abuse. Their initial and longer term responses and reflections were also coded. The second author independently read and coded about one-third of the transcripts using this coding scheme to arrive at a 100 percent agreement.

Sources of the codes were our professional experiences in the area of child sexual abuse, the review of research, and the first author’s familiarity with the content of the interviews because she had been the interviewer. These codes served as sensitizing concepts, which, as Blumer (1986) explained, are ideas that guide researchers to see aspects of phenomena that they might otherwise not notice. Although altering researchers’ ideas to what might be significant serves an obvious useful purpose, sensitizing concepts might also may blind researchers to other aspects of phenomena that might be important. Therefore, we also used negative case analysis, which is a procedure that guides researchers to look for aspects of phenomena that contradict or do not fit with emerging understandings. In this way, researchers are positioned to see patterns, variations within patterns, exceptions, and contradictions in findings ( Becker et al., 1961 ; Bogdan & Biklen, 2007 ; Cressey, 1953 ; Lindesmith, 1947 ).

As we wrote this section, we were aware of the limited space that we had to fill. Yet we were committed to accounting for where our codes came from for reviewers and editors who may be unfamiliar with pre-established codes. As discussed earlier, many reports are written as if codes appear by magic. We decided that, in this report, we would be as clear as possible about where our codes came from. We also reasoned that we would have to call on the authority of well-respected methodologists if reviewers and editors had questions about what we had done. Furthermore, we were aware of the dated nature of the references; we could do nothing about that because there has not been much written recently about pre-established codes. I have written about this quite a bit, but as one of the authors, I not only had to be anonymous during the review process, but I could not be the sole authority.

Generalizability

Many reviewers and editors have questions about the generalizability of the results of qualitative research. Authors themselves sometimes question the generalizability of their own findings. That’s why it remains important to provide clear guidelines in research reports about how the authors view the usefulness of their findings. The following ideas may be helpful to authors as they write their reports and to reviewers who are positioned as gatekeepers. The results of qualitative research are not meant to be generalized in a probabilistic sense. But because dropouts and refusals limit the randomness of samples, most forms of research can’t be generalized in a probabilistic sense.

Conversely, as Cronbach (1975) wrote almost forty years ago, the results of any form of research are working hypotheses that must be tested in local settings. Thus, the applicability of qualitative or any other kind of research can be demonstrated only through attempts at application. Do the findings illuminate other situations? Do the results provide researchers, policy makers, and direct practitioners with ideas on how to proceed? Those who apply the research expect to have to adjust findings to fit particular new situations. Many researchers and some journal editors and reviewers know through common sense and everyday experience how to use the results of qualitative research. Our personal lives are extended case studies. What we learn in one situation, we carry over into another. We know we have to test what we have learned in past situations for fit with new situations. If we do not, we impose our ideas on situations that may demand new perspectives. This common practice of applying results to all situations is disrespectful of local conditions and autonomy of persons. We want to avoid such disrespect in how we suggest readers use the results of our research.

Trustworthiness and Authenticity

Pointing out the trustworthiness of procedures and the findings that result from them sometimes are parts of methods sections. Related to trustworthiness are issues of authenticity ( Guba & Lincoln, 2005 ). Both trustworthiness and authenticity arise from immersion, seeking to understand the perspectives of others in context, reflexivity, and seeking multiple points of view. Researchers who have applied these principles will produce reports that are trustworthy and authentic. In addition, the reports will have grab. Extended discussions related to these issues are beyond the scope of this chapter and the scope of research reports as well.

I get more requests for revisions of methods sections, especially for accounts of data collection and analysis, than for any other parts of a manuscript. This is not surprising, given the multiple possible variations. I never know who the reviewers will be and what their expectations are. I rely first on my beliefs about what I want in the procedures section and then I study articles the journal has already publishes. I include what journal editors appear to expect, but I also add information that I think is important, even when it is not part of what I see in methods sections.

Findings Sections

Findings sections in research reports include both descriptive and conceptual material. Descriptive material is composed of researchers’ paraphrasing and summarizing of what they found and excerpts from interviews, fieldnotes, and documents. The descriptive material, at its best, is detailed and lively; it not only is informative, it has grab. This material contributes to understandings of human experiences in context. In addition, descriptive material is the basis of researchers’ theorizing and it also provides documentation and illustrations of assertions that researchers make.

Conceptual material comprises the analysis and is made up of inferences such as the general statements, concepts, and hypotheses that researchers develop from the material (data). One way to think about the relationship between descriptive and conceptual material is to think of descriptive material as composed of first-order concepts and conceptual material as composed of second-order concepts. Each type depends on the other. Credible conceptual material is based on descriptive material, some of which is contained in the article. Qualitative research yields mountains of data, a fraction of which can be placed into a published article.

As with other sections of research reports, findings sections have many possible variations that depend on the purpose of the research and the methodologies on which the research is based. Thus, the findings can range from heavily descriptive to heavily conceptual. Heavily conceptual research reports arise from research whose purpose is theoretical, in which researchers set out to test, refine, reformulate, or develop theory. Theoretical reports require some descriptive material to show the basis of theoretical statements, but they are often relatively short on descriptive material.

Reports that are primarily descriptive are composed of excerpts from data. Theoretical material appears in often subtle ways, such as in the form of concepts that organize findings. Irvine’s (2013) study of homeless people and their pets is largely descriptive, composed of excerpts from the interviews and Irvine’s paraphrases and narration of what she did, how, and when. The findings were narrative case studies based on interviews and observations. The details of the narratives were vivid and had the kind of grab that Glaser (1978) recommended. They showed multiples perspectives and variations on what it meant to homeless informants to have pets in their lives. The first three pages were a review of relevant literature and a presentation of method. The last five pages were a discussion of the findings.

As lengthy as the descriptive material is, conceptual material frames the entire report. In the literature review, Irvine introduced notions of positive identity, generativity, and redemption. She used them to analyze her data and organize findings, which were the narrative case studies. She used the concept of redemption as the core or organizing concept, going into some detail about how the research material supports the significance of this idea of pets as redemptive for homeless people.

This analysis is based squarely on the descriptive material. For instance, Irvine wrote that in the stories she presented in her article, “animals provide the vehicle for redemption.” She illustrated this point with a quote from one of the narratives and then reminded readers that the narratives “contain variations on the theme” of “ life is better because this animal is in it ” (p. 20; emphasis in original). Readers do not take this on faith because the basis of this general statement in presented multiple times in the case studies. Irvine has much more material on which she based these ideas, but there is not enough room in a journal-length article to show all of her evidence.

An example of an article that is theoretical in purpose and short on descriptive material is found in the work of Cordeau (2012) . She developed a grounded theory of the “transition from student to professional nurse” when student nurses work with “mannequins as simulated patients” (p. 90). Based on interviews, observations, and reports that the students wrote on their clinical experiences, the study was composed of about 10 percent descriptive material. This material included excerpts interviews and student reports. In the results section, she used this descriptive material to illustrate and possibly document the grounded theory she constructed. The theory’s “core category” was “linking,” which had four components, called properties. She documented the properties, primarily with her own thinking about her research material and also with excerpts from interviews, observations, and student reports.

Like Irvine’s (2013) study, the purpose of Cordeau’s (2012) work was applied where she wanted to build theory that would contribute to the development of clinical expertise in nursing students. She also devoted about one page of her study to applications.

Core Concepts

I’ve previously provided an extended discussion of core concepts. This section highlights some key points and illustrates them. Core concepts, often called core categories , organize findings. I prefer the term concept because concept is the term used in discussing theory, such as “concepts are the building blocks of theory,” and theory is one of several possible products of qualitative research. Researchers decide on which concepts are core in the course of analysis. Researchers are ready to write up their reports when they have settled on, named, and dimensionalized one or more core concepts. The terms “core concepts” and “core categories” are associated with grounded theory ( Charmaz, 2006 ; Corbin & Strauss, 2008 ), but they are useful in other types of qualitative research, such as interpretive phenomenology and narrative analysis. Core concepts both organize findings and, typically, bring together a great deal of information. The term “dimension” means that researchers account for as many aspects of the core concepts as they can in order to show the multiple perspectives and patterns that typically compose concepts.

In reporting on core concepts, I recommend that researchers name them, introduce them, describe them using excerpts from the research material, comment on them, and then situate each of the concepts and their commentaries within their scholarly contexts. As discussed earlier, this shows how the findings fit with what is already known, or add to, force modification of, or refute what is known. Although many researchers, do not situate findings in their scholarly contexts, they usually cover the other topics.

No matter how authors report findings, they should do so with grab. An example of a report exemplary for its grab is the work of Scott (2003) on what it means to be a professional with a physical disability. Scott began her article not with a literature review but with three reviewer comments on other articles she had written. She then stated that the present article was a response to these comments. She followed up with a description of three male students who waited to speak to her after class about her disability and the notion of embodiment that she discussed in class. She brought in related literature throughout the article. Through her own reflections, reports on how others have responded to her, reports on the accounts that three other women with disabilities gave to her as a person with cerebral palsy, and her literature review, Scott not only showed the meanings of disabilities to persons who have them, but also what others say about their own disabilities, what some people who are able-bodied say about women with disabilities, and how all of this connects to what is known about disabilities and to wide-spread beliefs about disabilities. Her article is full of grab, such as the header that read, “The Day I Became Human.” With the authors’ own experience as the centerpiece, this article exemplifies write-ups that demonstrate the meanings of lived experience in various contexts, immersion, grab, and implications for social action. The analysis she presented as part of her findings is exemplary.

In the production of quality research, no matter the type of write-up, there are no short cuts. Research reports based on poetry, for example, are held to the same standards as any other article: grab, immersion, lived experience in context, and implications for action. In addition, such research reports typically locate themselves within social and human sciences traditions. Furman’s (2007) reflections and analysis of poetry that he wrote over the course of many years provide an example of how poetry can be used in qualitative analysis. This kind of research is a type of document analysis. In performance studies, researchers create a theater production of informant’s accounts of their experiences whose purpose is to transform audiences and move them to action ( Saldaña, 2003 ). The performances are the equivalent of research reports and when they are effective, they have the four characteristics of qualitative research under discussion.

Discussion Sections

In traditional research reports, the discussion section follows the results section. In discussion sections, authors reflect on findings, including what the findings are, how findings contribute to understandings of phenomena of interest, the lines of inquiry the results open up, and implications for policy and practice. Other generic topics to consider are those related to the focus of the journal. For example, if the journal’s focus is related to health, then authors show how findings are related to health.

Discussion sections present the author with opportunities to advocate for how his or her research can be used. The applied purposes of Irvine’s (2013) research come through when she devoted an entire page to make observations about implications. She pointed out how her research contributes to a transformation of images of homeless persons as isolated to images of them as engaged in relationships not only with their pets but with other persons, too. She noted that rehousing homeless persons requires a change in policy that would allow them to have pets. Furthermore, she said that caring for a pet “can turn things around” (p. 24).

In the discussion section I wrote with Anderson ( Gilgun & Anderson, 2013 ), we addressed methodological issues, such as the probable existence of other patterns in addition to those we identified and the nonrandom nature of our sample. We also acknowledged the difficulties in working with families in which child sexual abuse has occurred. Since qualitative researchers want to understand lived experiences, we had to prepare ourselves to deal effectively in research areas that are difficult emotionally for us as researchers. Although we may acknowledge the emotional challenges of some topics in reflexivity statements, discussion sections are opportunities for authors to acknowledge the difficulties of using the results we produce. In the article I wrote with Anderson, we made such an acknowledgment, one that we hoped would facilitate more effective practice. We wrote

Practitioners themselves may experience shock, rage, and disgust. The practice of neutrality, in its therapeutic sense, is important in these cases ( Gil & Johnson, 1993 ; Rober, 2011 ). Neutrality means that practitioners maintain their analytic stances while at the same time they remain attuned not only to service users but also to themselves. When practicing neutrality, service providers regulate their own emotional responses in order to remain emotionally available to service users. Neutrality also means that service providers remain open-minded so that they can hear stories that they may not expect to hear; in other words, to make room for the unexpected ( Rober, 2011 ). Attunement to inner processes is a form of reflection that can facilitate the development of trust between service users and providers. When providers are reflective, they are less likely to tune out, close down, and otherwise stop listening to what services users express. When they listen and hear what service users say, they are more likely to facilitate the best possible outcomes in difficult situations ( Weingarten, 2012 ).

Doing research on lived experience can be difficult for informants and for researchers. Acknowledgment of the implications of these difficulties for users of the research has a place in discussion sections.

In summary, most articles are fairly straightforward in their write-ups: focused literature reviews, reflexivity statements in many cases, clear statements of purpose, clarity about sources of research questions and/or hypotheses, identification and definition of key concepts, identification of codes the researcher develops from literature reviews and reflexivity statements, succinct accounting of methods, and findings organized logically by core concepts around which the researcher organizes the multiple dimensions of those concepts. Excellent writing makes articles interesting and accessible. Some kinds of write-ups deviate from these components, but they are held to the same standards of immersion, experiences in context, multiple perspectives, and implications for action and other applications. When authors have the good fortune to have a recommendation to revise and resubmit, suggestions for revisions often improve the quality of the article.

The seemingly endless variations that are possible in the write-up of qualitative research makes writing and reviewing manuscripts challenging, especially when compared to traditions in which rigid rules prevail. However, it is important that approaches to qualitative research continue to evolve to meet with our ever-changing understandings of human phenomena. The clarity and transparency of reports are the fundamental guidelines for making judgments about quality. I often tell my students that the guidelines for doing qualitative research are flexible, and what is important is to be clear about what you did, why you did it, and what you came up with.

The notion of grab is central to write-up. Since qualitative research seeks to understand lived experiences, it is logical that findings report on the lived experiences in vivid terms, replete with quotes from data. This is not to undermine the importance of analysis, but grab is possible even in write-ups that require a great deal of analysis. Grab becomes possible because researchers must provide the evidence for the theories and concepts they develop.

When there are questions about priorities related to informants’ voices, researchers’ interpretations, and prior research, I hope that authors, reviewers, and editors remember that as important as analysis and previous work may be, the voices of informants bring these other important parts of manuscripts to life. Researchers make decisions about whose voices take priority.

There is no one way to respond to these dilemmas. Authors must make their own decisions about what is important to them and then search for journals that will welcome what they want to convey. It’s important to consider pushing the boundaries and writing an article in a way that the researcher thinks will best convey his or her findings.

The importance of quality data, quality analysis, and “grab” are foundational. I began this chapter with a discussion of the balance between description and analysis. I then considered core concepts as organizers of findings, the place of literature reviews, styles of presenting methods and methodologies, and the balance between the voices of informants and researchers. I concluded with the many variations in types of reports that result from the various purposes that qualitative research projects can have. There are many different types of qualitative research and many styles of write-ups. This chapter may sensitize readers to enduring issues in the writing of research reports. Like qualitative research itself, there are multiple points of view on how to write up qualitative research.

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Gilgun, Jane F. ( 1999 d ). Methodological pluralism and qualitative family research. In Suzanne K. Steinmetz , Marvin B. Sussman , and Gary W. Peterson (Eds.), Handbook of Marriage and the Family (2nd ed.) (pp. 219–261). New York: Plenum.

Gilgun, J. F. (2000, June 25–28). A comprehensive theory of interpersonal violence . Paper presented at the Victimization of Children and Youth: An International Research Conference, Durham, NH .

Gilgun, J. F. ( 2002 a). Completing the circle: American Indian medicine wheels and the promotion of resilience in children and youth in care.   Journal of Human Behavior and the Social Environment , 6 (2), 65–84.

Gilgun, J. F. ( 2002 b). Social work and the assessment of the potential for violence. In T. N. Tiong & I. Dodds (Eds.), Social work around the world II (pp. 58–74). Berne, Switzerland: International Federation of Social Workers.

Gilgun, J. F. ( 2004 a). A strengths-based approach to child and family assessment. In D. R. Catheral (Ed.), Handbook of stress, trauma and the family (pp. 307–324). New York: Bruner-Routledge.

Gilgun, J. F. ( 2004 b). The 4-D: Strengths-based assessments for youth who’ve experienced adversities.   Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment , 10 (4), 51–73 .

Gilgun, J. F. ( 2005 a). Evidence-based practice, descriptive research, and the resilience-schema-gender-brain (RSGB) assessment.   British Journal of Social Work , 35 (6), 843–862.

Gilgun, J. F. ( 2005 b). “ Grab” and good science: Writing up the results of qualitative research.   Qualitative Health Research , 15 (2), 256–262.

Gilgun, J. F. ( 2005 c). Lighten up! The citation dilemma in qualitative research.   Qualitative Health Research , 15 (5), 721–725.

Gilgun, J. F. ( 2005 d). Qualitative research and family psychology.   Journal of Family Psychology , 19 (1), 40–50.

Gilgun, J. F. ( 2006 ). Children and adolescents with problematic sexual behaviors: Lessons from research on resilience. In R. Longo & D. Prescott (Eds.), Current perspectives on working with sexually aggressive youth and youth with sexual behavior problems (pp. 383–394). Holyoke, MA: Neari Press.

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Writing a qualitative research report

Affiliation.

• 1 School of Nursing and Midwifery Studies, University of Wales College of Medicine, Heath Park, Cardiff, UK. [email protected]
• PMID: 15234716
• DOI: 10.1016/j.aaen.2003.11.006

A research project in nursing or nursing education is probably only complete once the findings have been published. This paper offers a format for writing a qualitative research report for publication. It suggests, at least, the following sections: introduction, aims of the study, review of the literature, sample, data collection methods, data analysis methods, findings, discussion, conclusion, abstract. Each of these sections is addressed along with many written-out examples. In some sections, alternative approaches are suggested. The aim of the paper is to help the neophyte researcher to structure his or her report and for the experienced researcher to reflect on his or her current practice. References to other source material on qualitative research are given.

Publication types

• Nursing Research / methods*
• Periodicals as Topic / standards
• Qualitative Research*
• Research Design / standards
• Writing* / standards

40.4 WRITING QUALITATIVE RESEARCH REPORTS

Table of Contents

Ai, ethics & human agency, collaboration, information literacy, writing process, qualitative research methods.

Qualitative Research is a research method , a kind of empirical research study, that

• relies on observations and interviews to develop qualitative data (i.e., words and ideas )
• focuses primarily on gathering and interpreting qualitative data (i.e., words and ideas ) rather than numerical data (i.e., numbers and statistics ) in order to test knowledge claims and develop knowledge
• is deployed by different methodological communities for different purposes–e.g., to test hypotheses, to generate hypotheses, to create narratives about individual experience, to develop theories.

The authority and value of qualitative research methods–the kind of knowledge qualitative research produces–has been a robust topic of academic debate .

• Some view qualitative research to be a scientific method, a way to research cause-effect relationships and identify universal truths.
• Others view qualitative research to be a rhetorical act, a method of invention that results in stories about the observed and the observer.

Qualitative research means different things to different methodological communities. And qualitative research methods change over time–in response to critique, dialectic , and changes in technologies for gathering and analyzing data.

Key Words: Fieldwork, Ethnography , Case Study , Phenomenology, Positivism , Postpositivism

Qualitative Research is a highly prized method for developing knowledge across academic disciplines, including business, communication studies, English, education, social work, psychology, cultural studies, and medicine. Furthermore, Qualitative research methods are widely used in workplace contexts, especially journalism, medicine, and education.

From the sciences and social sciences to the arts and humanities, qualitative researchers rely on observations and interviews to develop knowledge. They observe and interview people and communities to learn why and how something happens (Atkinson & Delamont 2010). They work to identify, analyze, and understand “patterned behaviors and social processes” (Given 2008).

Denoting a study as a form of qualitative research doesn’t mean it may not have elements of textual research or quantitative research . Qualitative researchers often employ some textual research practices . For instance, they may review related research or relate insights from their study to other studies. Plus, they may quantify–count and measure–some observations. Thus, if someone describes their study as qualitative, then they are saying that most of evidence, the really foundational evidence on which they base their knowledge claims, is based primarily on qualitative data.

What is the Authority of Qualitative Research?

Across disciplines and workplace settings, qualitative researchers agree with one another that observations and interviews can be used to generate knowledge . However, methodological communities may have conflicting ideas about how observations and interviews should be conducted or what the observations ultimately mean.

Some researchers believe qualitative research produces positivistic knowledge –that insights gleaned from interviews with individuals or observations of people can be generalized to explain the behaviors of other individuals and groups. Others believe that qualitative research produces stories and localized knowledge as opposed to generalizable knowledge.

Qualitative Research & Positivism

For methodological communities that privilege positivistic knowledge (especially academic disciplines within the sciences, social sciences, and education), qualitative research may be perceived as

• a viable way to inductively develop hypotheses that can be tested through scientific methods
• a viable way to test hypotheses so long as certain experimental procedures are followed, such as randomized selection of subjects

Qualitative research ers who are endeavoring to develop knowledge claims the positivistic community will accept as authoritative assume that it’s valid to generalize from the particular to the general so long as researchers remain as objective as possible, that they ground insights into multiple observations. These researchers assume their qualitative studies of individuals or communities produce insights that are generalizable to all of humanity.

• For instance, a neurologist may conduct a case study of a patient who has a neurological deficit. In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales , Oliver Sacs reports on his interviews and observations of a patient with visual agnosia. He provides this case history, this research closeup of one patient, to provide a description of not only how that one patient responded to a neurological deficit but how other (if not all) patients with similar deficits would engage in cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal tasks.

Qualitative Methods and PostPositivism

Between the 1970s to the 1980s, as surveyed below, qualitative researchers took a postmodern turn: they began problematizing how researchers represented the other –the individuals or communities they were observing. They rejected the idealization of the investigator as an impartial, objective observer who discovered universal truths. Instead, they argued efforts to engage in qualitative research are invariably rhetorical efforts–that the investigator’s words and interpretations are grounded in their personal experiences, gender, economics, culture, historical periods–and more. Likewise, the perceptions, the words and experiences of the observed are equally rhetorical. From this perspective, qualitative research is a way of seeing and a way of not seeing. Rather than a scientific method, qualitative research is a rhetorical method for developing stories about ourselves and others.

Historical Trends in Qualitative Research

Qualitative research methods are constantly changing over time–in response to critique, dialectic, theory, and changes in technologies for gathering and analyzing data.

Early Ethnography

Initially, back in the day, qualitative research was a method practiced by early explorers to account for their journeys. In “Qualitative Research, History of,” Sharon Lockyer (2012) argues

Qualitative research during this period [17th century] involved the Western researcher observing the customs, practices, and behaviors of “primitive” societies, to understand the other. During this period, the other was often regarded as a non-White person living in a society considered less civilized than the society to which the observer belonged. Such interest in “primitive people” was exacerbated by the problems experienced by explorers during the 15th and 16th centuries when attempting to account for people they discovered in the New World Lockyer, Sharon (2012)

Colonial Ethnography

From the 17th to the 19th century, according to Lockyer, qualitative researchers engaged in colonial ethnography: they analyzed cultural differences and “highlighted the positive preservation effects of indirect rule.” American ethnographers, from the late 19th to early 20th century) “focused on American Indians, who were still regarded as primitive and as representing a specific other” (Lockyer 2012).

Ethnography of the Civic Other

Between the early 20th century to the late 1960s, ethnography became professionalized by the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago. Ethnographers engaged in participant observation and focused on urban communities to research “the religious beliefs, practices, and customs of Black, Asian, and European immigrants” (Lockyer 2012).

Postmodern Ethnography

Since the 1980s, postmodernism, feminism, and postpositivism–and related emerging critical theories–have destabilized and problematized the assumptions that guided classical qualitative methods (see discussion above).

Qualitative research methods informed by postmodernism, p

• (e.g., notions such as the investigator is somehow superior, the subjects are savages, the goal of the narrative is to celebrate cultural control and assimilation)
• rejects the characterization of the investigator as an impartial, objective who discovers knowledge
• explores how the subjectivity of the investigator shapes the narrative.

Atkinson, Paul &has  Sara Delamont (2010). SAGE Qualitative Research Methods . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications

Given, Lisa M., ed. (2008). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications

Heath, Shirley Brice.  Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Commuities and Classrooms . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Lockyer, Sharon (2012). “Qualitative Research, History of.” The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications

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Chapter 6. Reflexivity

Introduction.

Related to epistemological issues of how we know anything about the social world, qualitative researchers understand that we the researchers can never be truly neutral or outside the study we are conducting. As observers, we see things that make sense to us and may entirely miss what is either too obvious to note or too different to comprehend. As interviewers, as much as we would like to ask questions neutrally and remain in the background, interviews are a form of conversation, and the persons we interview are responding to us . Therefore, it is important to reflect upon our social positions and the knowledges and expectations we bring to our work and to work through any blind spots that we may have. This chapter discusses the concept of reflexivity and its importance for conducting reliable qualitative research.

Reflexivity: What It Is and Why It Is Important

Remember our discussion in epistemology ? Qualitative researchers tend to question assertions of absolute fact or reality, unmediated through subject positions and subject knowledge. There are limits to what we know because we are part of the social worlds we inhabit. To use the terminology of standpoint theorists, we have a standpoint from which we observe the world just as much as anyone else. In this, we too are the blind men, and the world is our elephant. None of us are omniscient or neutral observers. Because of this epistemological standpoint, qualitative researchers value the ability to reflect upon and think hard about our own effects on our research. We call this reflexivity. Reflexivity “generally involves the self-examination of how research findings were produced, and, particularly, the role of the researcher in their construction” ( Heaton 2004:104 ).

There are many aspects of being reflexive. First, there is the simple fact that we are human beings with the limitations that come with that condition. We have likes and dislikes, biases, blind spots, preferences, and so on. If we do not take these into account, they can prevent us from being the best researcher we can be. Being reflective means, first and foremost, trying as best as possible to bracket out elements of our own character and understanding that get in the way. It is important to note that bias (in this context, at least) is not inherently wrong. It just is. Unavoidable. But by noting it, we can minimize its impact or, in some cases, help explain more clearly what it is we see or why it is that we are asking the questions we are asking. For example, I might want to communicate to my audience that I grew up poor and that I have a lot of sympathy and concern for first-generation college students as a result. This “bias” of mine motivates me to do the work I do, even as I try to ensure that it does not blind me to things I find out in the course of my research. [1]

A second aspect of being reflexive is being aware that you yourself are part of the research when you are conducting qualitative research. This is particularly true when conducting interviews, observing interactions, or participating in activities. You have a body, and it will be “read” by those in the field. You will be perceived as an insider or an outsider, as a friend or foe, as empathetic or hostile. Some of this will be wrong. People will prejudge you based on the color of your skin, your presented gender, the accent of your language. People will classify you based on the clothes you wear, and they will be more open to you if you remind them of a friendly aunt or uncle and more reserved if you remind them of someone they don’t like. This is all natural and inevitable. Your research will suffer if you do not take this into account, if you do not reflect upon how you are being read and how this might be influencing what people tell you or what they are willing to do in front of you. The flip side of this problem is that your particular body and presence will open some doors barred to other researchers. Finding sites and contexts where your presented self is a benefit rather than a burden is an important part of your individual research career. Be honest with yourself about this, and you will be more successful as a qualitative researcher. Learn to leverage yourself in your research.

The third aspect of being reflexive is related to how we communicate our work to others. Being honest with our position, as I am about my own social background and its potential impact on what I study or about how I leveraged my own position to get people to open up to me, helps our audiences evaluate what we have found. Maybe I haven’t entirely eliminated my biases or weaknesses, but by telling my audience who I am and where I potentially stand, they can take account of those biases and weaknesses in their reading of my findings. Letting them know that I wore pink when talking with older men because that made them more likely to be kind to me (a strategy acknowledged by Posselt [ 2016 ]) helps them understand the interview context. In other words, my research becomes more reliable when my own social position and the strategies I used are communicated.

Some people think being reflective is just another form of narcissistic navel-gazing. “The study is not about you!” they might cry. True, to some degree—but that also misses the point. All studies on the social world are inevitably about us as well because we are part of that social world. It is actually more dangerous to pretend that we are neutral observers, outside what we are observing. Pierre Bourdieu makes this point several times, and I think it is worth quoting him here: “The idea of a neutral science is fiction, an interested fiction which enables its authors to present a version of the dominant representation of the social world, naturalized and euphemized into a particularly misrecognizable and symbolically, therefore, particularly effective form, and to call it scientific” (quoted in Lemert 1981:278 ).

Bourdieu ( 1984 ) argues that reflective analysis is “not an epistemological scruple” but rather “an indispensable pre-condition of scientific knowledge of the object” ( 92 ). It would be narcissistic to present findings without reflection, as that would give much more weight to any findings or insights that emerge than is due.

The critics are right about one thing, however. Putting oneself at the center of the research is also inappropriate. [2] The focus should be on what is being researched, and the reflexivity is there to advance the study, not to push it aside. This issue has emerged at times when researchers from dominant social positions reflect upon their social locations vis-à-vis study participants from marginalized locations. A researcher who studies how low-income women of color experience unemployment might need to address her White, upper-class, fully employed social location, but not at the cost of crowding out the stories, lived experiences, and understandings of the women she has interviewed. This can sometimes be a delicate balance, and not everyone will agree that a person has walked it correctly.

Examples of Reflexivity in Practice

Most qualitative researchers include a positionality statement in any “methods section” of their publications. This allows readers to understand the location of the researcher, which is often helpful for gauging reliability . Many journals now require brief positionality statements as well. Here are a few examples of such statements.

The first is from an ethnographic study of elite golfers. Ceron-Anaya ( 2017 ) writes about his class, race, and gender and how these aspects of his identity and social location affected his interactions with research participants:

My own class origins, situated near the intersection between the middle and the lower-middle class, hindered cooperation in some cases. For example, the amiable interaction with one club member changed toward the end of the interview when he realized that I commonly moved about in the city by public transportation (which is a strong class indicator). He was not rude but stopped elaborating on the answers as he had been doing up to that point.…Bodily confidence is a privilege of the privileged. My subordinate position, vis-à-vis golfers, was ameliorated by my possession of cultural capital, objectified in my status of researcher/student in a western university. However, my cultural capital dwindled in its value at the invisible but firm boundary between the upper-middle and the upper class. The few contacts I made with members of the upper class produced no connections with other members of the same group, illustrating how the research process is also inserted in the symbolic and material dynamics that shape the field. ( 288 )

What did you learn from Ceron-Anaya’s reflection? If he hadn’t told you about his background, would this have made a difference in reading about elite golfers? Would the findings be different had Ceron-Anaya driven up to the club in a limousine? Is it helpful to know he came by bus?

The second example is from a study on first-generation college students. Hinz ( 2016 ) discusses both differences and similarities between herself and those she interviewed and how both could have affected the study:

I endeavored to avoid researcher bias by allowing the data to speak for itself, but my own habitus as a White, female, middle-class second-generation college student with a few years of association with Selective State [elite university] may have influenced my interpretation. Being a Selective State student at the time of the interviews provided a familiarity with the environment in which the participants were living, and an ease of communication facilitated by a shared institutional culture. And yet, not being a first-gen myself, it seemed as if I were standing on the periphery of their experience, looking in. ( 289–290 )

Note that Hinz cannot change who she is, nor should she. Being aware (reflective) that she may “stand on the periphery” of the experience of those she interviews has probably helped her listen more closely rather than assume she understands what is really going on. Do you find her more reliable given this?

These statements can be quite long, especially when found in methodological appendixes in books rather than short statements in articles. This last lengthy example comes from my own work. I try to place myself, explaining the motivations for the research I conducted at small liberal arts colleges:

I began this project out of a deep curiosity about how college graduates today were faring in an increasingly debt-ridden and unequal labor market. I was working at a small liberal arts college when I began thinking about this project and was poised to take a job at another one. During my interview for the new job, I was told that I was a good fit, because I had attended Barnard College, so I knew what the point of a liberal arts college was. I did. A small liberal arts college was a magical place. You could study anything you wanted, for no reason at all, simply for the love of it. And people would like you for it. You were surrounded by readers, by people who liked to dress up in costume and recite Shakespeare, by people who would talk deep into the night about the meaning of life or whether “beauty” existed out there, in nature, or was simply a projection of our own circumstances. My own experience at Barnard had been somewhat like that. I studied Ancient Greek and Latin, wrote an undergraduate thesis on the legal standing of Vestal Virgins in Ancient Rome, and took frequent subway rides to the Cloisters, the medieval annex of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I sketched the courtyard and stared at unicorn tapestries. But I also worked full-time, as a waitress at a series of hectic and demanding restaurants around the city, as a security guard for the dorm, as a babysitter for some pretty privileged professors who lived in doorman buildings along Riverside Park, and at the library (the best job by far). I also constantly worried I would not be able to finish my degree, as every year I was unsure how I would come up with the money to pay for costs of college above and beyond the tuition (which, happily, was covered by the college given my family’s low income). Indeed, the primary reason I studied the Classics was because all the books were freely available in the library. There are no modern textbooks—you just find a copy of the Iliad. There are a lot of those in a city like New York. Due to my fears, I pushed to graduate one year early, taking a degree in “Ancient Studies” instead of “Classics,” which could have led on to graduate training. From there, I went to law school, which seemed like a safe choice. I do not remember ever having a conversation with anyone about how to find a job or what kinds of job one could do with a degree in Ancient Studies. I had little to no social networks, as I had spent my time studying and working. And I was very lucky, because I graduated with almost zero debt. For years, until that job interview, I hadn’t really thought my Barnard experience had been that great or unusual. But now it was directly helping me get a job, about fifteen years after graduation. And it probably had made me a better person, whatever that means. Had I graduated with debt, however, I am not so sure that it would have been worth it. Was it, on balance, a real opportunity and benefit for poor students like me? Even now? I had a hunch of what I might find if I looked: small liberal arts colleges were unique places of opportunity for low-income first-generation working-class students who somehow managed to find and get in to one of them (no easy task). I thought that, because of their ethos, their smallness, the fact that one could not hide from professors, these colleges would do a fair job equalizing opportunities and experiences for all their students. I wanted to tell this story. But that is not the story that I found, or not entirely. While everyone benefits from the kind of education a small liberal arts college can offer, because students begin and continue so differently burdened and privileged, the advantages of the already-advantaged are amplified, potentially increasing rather than decreasing initial inequalities. That is not really a surprising story, but it is an important one to tell and to remember. Education doesn’t reduce inequality. Going to a good college doesn’t level the playing field for low-income, first-generation, working-class students. But perhaps it can help them write a book about that. ( Hurst 2019:259–261 )

What do you think? Did you learn something about the author that would help you, as a reader, understand the reasons and context for the study? Would you trust the researcher? If you said yes, why?

How to Do It

How does one become a reflective researcher? Practice! Nearly every great qualitative researcher maintains a reflexive journal (there are exceptions that prove the rule), a type of diary where they record their thinking on the research process itself. This might include writing about the research design (chapter 2), plotting out strategies for sample selection (chapter 6), or talking through what one believes can be known (chapter 3). During analysis, this journal is a place to record ideas and insights and pose questions for further reflection or follow-up studies. This journal should be highly personal. It is a place to record fears, concerns, and hopes as well. Why are you studying what you are studying? What is really motivating you? Being clear with yourself and being able to put it down in words are invaluable to the research process.

Today, there are many blogs out there on writing reflective journals, with helpful suggestions and examples. Although you may want to take a look at some of these, the form of your own journal will probably be unique. This is you, the researcher, on the page. Each of us looks different. Use the journal to interrogate your decisions and clarify your intent. If you find something during the study of note, you might want to ask yourself what led you to note that. Why do you think this “thing” is a “thing”? What about your own position, background, or researcher status that makes you take note? And asking yourself this question might lead you to think about what you did not notice. Other questions to ask yourself include the following: How do I know “that thing” I noted? So what? What does it mean? What are the implications? Who cares about this and why? Remember that doing qualitative research well is recursive , meaning that we may begin with a research design, but the steps of doing the research often loop back to the beginning. By keeping a reflective journal, you allow yourself to circle back to the beginning, to make changes to the study to keep it in line with what you are really interested in knowing.

One might also consider designing research that includes multiple investigators, particularly those who may not share your preconceptions about the study. For example, if you are studying conservative students on campus, and you yourself thoroughly identify as liberal, you might want to pair up with a researcher interested in the topic who grew up in a conservative household. If you are studying racial regimes, consider creating a racially diverse team of researchers. Or you might include in your research design a component of participatory research wherein members of the community of interest become coresearchers. Even if you can’t form a research team, you can reach out to others for feedback as you move along. Doing research can be a lonely enterprise, so finding people who will listen to you and nudge you to clarify your thinking where necessary or move you to consider an aspect you have missed is invaluable.

Finally, make it a regular part of your practice to write a paragraph reporting your perspectives, positions, values, and beliefs and how these may have influenced the research. This paragraph may be included in publications upon request.

Internal Validity

Being reflexive can help ensure that our studies are internally valid. All research must be valid to be helpful. We say a study’s findings are externally valid when they are equally true of other times, places, people. Quantitative researchers often spend a lot of time grappling with external validity , as they are often trying to demonstrate that their sample is representative of a larger population. Although we do not do that in qualitative research, we do sometimes make claims that the processes and mechanisms we uncover here, in this particular setting, are likely to be equally active in that setting over there, although there may be (will be!) contextual differences as well. Internal validity is more peculiar to qualitative research. Is your finding an accurate representation of what you are studying? Are you describing the people you are observing or interviewing as they really are? This is internal validity , and you should be able to see how this connects with the requirement of reflexivity. To the extent that you leave unexamined your own biases or preconceptions, you will fail at accurately representing those people and processes you study. Remember that “bias” here is not a moral failing in the way we commonly use bias in the nonresearch world but an inevitable product of our being social beings who inhabit social worlds, with all the various complexities surrounding that. Because of things that have happened to you, certain things (concepts, quotes, activities) might jump out at you as being particularly important. Being reflexive allows you to take a step back and grapple with the larger picture, reflecting on why you might be seeing X (which is present) but also missing Y (which is also present). It also allows you to consider what effect/impact your presence has on what you are observing or being told and to make any adjustments necessary to minimize your impact or, at the very least, to be aware of these effects and talk about them in any descriptions or presentations you make. There are other ways of ensuring internal validity (e.g., member checking , triangulation ), but being reflective is an essential component.

Advanced: Bourdieu on Reflexivity

One researcher who really tackled the issue of reflexivity was Pierre Bourdieu. [3] Known in the US primarily as a theorist, Bourdieu was a very capable and thorough researcher, who employed a variety of methods in his wide-ranging studies. Originally trained as an anthropologist, he became uncomfortable with the unreflective “outsider perspective” he was taught to follow. How was he supposed to observe and write about the various customs and rules of the people he was studying if he did not take into account his own supposedly neutral position in the observations? And even more interestingly, how could he write about customs and rules as if they were lifted from but outside of the understandings and practice of the people following them? When you say “God bless you” to someone who sneezes, are you really following a social custom that requires the prevention of illness through some performative verbal ritual of protection, or are you saying words out of reflex and habit? Bourdieu wondered what it meant that anthropologists were so ready to attribute meaning to actions that, to those performing them, were probably unconsidered. This caused him to ponder those deep epistemological questions about the possibilities of knowledge, particularly what we can know and truly understand about others. Throughout the following decades, as he developed his theories about the social world out of the deep and various studies he engaged in, he thought about the relationship between the researcher and the researched. He came to several conclusions about this relationship.

First, he argued that researchers needed to be reflective about their position vis-à-vis the object of study. The very fact that there is a subject and an object needs to be accounted for. Too often, he argued, the researcher forgets that part of the relationship, bracketing out the researcher entirely, as if what is being observed or studied exists entirely independently of the study. This can lead to false reports, as in the case where a blind man grasps the trunk of the elephant and claims the elephant is cylindrical, not having recognized how his own limitations of sight reduced the elephant to only one of its parts.

As mentioned previously, Bourdieu ( 1984 ) argued that “reflective analysis of the tools of analysis is not an epistemological scruple but an indispensable precondition of scientific knowledge of the object” ( 92 ). It is not that researchers are inherently biased—they are—but rather that the relationship between researcher and researched is an unnatural one that needs to be accounted for in the analysis. True and total objectivity is impossible, as researchers are human subjects themselves, called to research what interests them (or what interests their supervisors) and also inhabiting the social world. The solution to this problem is to be reflective and to account for these aspects in the analysis itself. Here is how Bourdieu explains this charge:

To adopt the viewpoint of REFLEXIVITY is not to renounce objectivity but to question the privilege of the knowing subject, which the antigenetic vision arbitrarily frees, as purely noetic, from the labor of objectification. To adopt this viewpoint is to strive to account for the empirical “subject” in the very terms of the objectivity constructed by the scientific subject (notably by situating it in a determined place in social space-time) and thereby to give oneself awareness and (possible) mastery of the constraints which may be exercised on the scientific subject via all the ties which attach it to the empirical “subject,” to its interests, motives, assumptions, beliefs, its doxa, and which it must break in order to constitute itself . ( 1996:207 ; emphases added)

Reflexivity, for Bourdieu, was a trained state of mind for the researcher, essential for proper knowledge production. Let’s use a story from Hans Christian Andersen to illustrate this point. If you remember this story from your childhood, it goes something like this: Two con artists show up in a town in which its chief monarch spends a lot of money on expensive clothes and splashy displays. They sense an opportunity to make some money out of this situation and pretend they are talented weavers from afar. They tell the vain emperor that they can make the most magnificent clothes anyone has ever seen (or not seen, as the case may be!). Because what they really do is “pretend” to weave and sew and hand the emperor thin air, which they then help him to put on in an elaborate joke. They tell him that only the very stupid and lowborn will be unable to see the magnificent clothes. Embarrassed that he can’t see them either, he pretends he can. Everyone pretends they can see clothes, when really the emperor walks around in his bare nakedness. As he parades through town, people redden and bow their heads, but no one says a thing. That is, until one child looks at the naked emperor and starts to laugh. His laughter breaks the spell, and everyone realizes the “naked truth.”

Now let us add a new thread to this story. The boy did not laugh. Years go by, and the emperor continues to wear his new clothes. At the start of every day, his aides carefully drape the “new clothes” around his naked body. Decades go by, and this is all “normal.” People don’t even see a naked emperor but a fully robed leader of the free world. A researcher, raised in this milieu, visits the palace to observe court habits. She observes the aides draping the emperor. She describes the care they take in doing so. She nowhere reports that the clothes are nonexistent because she herself has been trained to see them . She thus misses a very important fact—that there are no clothes at all! Note that it is not her individual “biases” that are getting in the way but her unreflective acceptance of the reality she inhabits that binds her to report things less accurately than she might.

In his later years, Bourdieu turned his attention to science itself and argued that the promise of modern science required reflectivity among scientists. We need to develop our reflexivity as we develop other muscles, through constant practice. Bourdieu ( 2004 ) urged researchers “to convert reflexivity into a disposition, constitutive of their scientific habitus, a reflexivity reflex , capable of acting not ex poste , on the opus operatum , but a priori , on the modus operandi ” ( 89 ). In other words, we need to build into our research design an appreciation of the relationship between researcher and researched.

To do science properly is to be reflective, to be aware of the social waters in which one swims and to turn one’s researching gaze on oneself and one’s researcher position as well as on the object of the research. Above all, doing science properly requires one to acknowledge science as a social process. We are not omniscient gods, lurking above the humans we observe and talk to. We are human too.

Further Readings

Barry, Christine A., Nicky Britten, Nick Barbar, Colin Bradley, and Fiona Stevenson. 1999. “Using Reflexivity to Optimize Teamwork in Qualitative Research.”  Qualitative Health Research  9(1):26–44. The coauthors explore what it means to be reflexive in a collaborative research project and use their own project investigating doctor-patient communication about prescribing as an example.

Hsiung, Ping-Chun. 2008. “Teaching Reflexivity in Qualitative Interviewing.” Teaching Sociology 36(3):211–226. As the title suggests, this article is about teaching reflexivity to those conducting interviews.

Kenway, Jane, and Julie McLeod. 2004. “Bourdieu’s Reflexive Sociology and ‘Spaces of Points of View’: Whose Reflexivity, Which Perspective?” British Journal of Sociology of Education 25(4):525–544. For a more nuanced understanding of Bourdieu’s meaning of reflexivity and how this contrasts with other understandings of the term in sociology.

Kleinsasser, Audrey M. 2000. “Researchers, Reflexivity, and Good Data: Writing to Unlearn.” Theory into Practice 39(3):155–162. Argues for the necessity of reflexivity for the production of “good data” in qualitative research.

Linabary, Jasmine R., and Stephanie A. Hamel. 2017. “Feminist Online Interviewing: Engaging Issues of Power, Resistance and Reflexivity in Practice.” Feminist Review 115:97–113. Proposes “reflexive email interviewing” as a promising method for feminist research.

Rabbidge, Michael. 2017. “Embracing Reflexivity: The Importance of Not Hiding the Mess.” TESOL Quarterly 51(4):961–971. The title here says it all.

Wacquant, Loïc J. D. 1989. “Towards a Reflexive Sociology: A Workshop with Pierre Bourdieu.” Sociological Theory 7(1):26–63. A careful examination of Bourdieu’s notion of reflexivity by one of his most earnest disciples.

• Someone might ask me if I have truly been able to “stand” in the shoes of more privileged students and if I might be overlooking similarities among college students because of my “biased” standpoint. These are questions I ask myself all the time. They have even motivated me to conduct my latest research on college students in general so that I might check my observations that working-class college students are uniquely burdened ( Hurst 2019 ). One of the things I did find was that middle-class students, relative to upper-class students, are also relatively disadvantaged and sometimes experience (feel) that disadvantage. ↵
• Unless, of course, one is engaged in autoethnography! Even in that case, however, the point of the study should probably be about a larger phenomenon or experience that can be understood more deeply through insights that emerge in the study of the particular self, not really a study about that self. ↵
• I mentioned Pierre Bourdieu earlier in the chapter. For those who want to know more about his work, I’ve included this advanced section. Undergraduates should feel free to skip over. ↵

The practice of being conscious of and reflective upon one’s own social location and presence when conducting research.  Because qualitative research often requires interaction with live humans, failing to take into account how one’s presence and prior expectations and social location affect the data collected and how analyzed may limit the reliability of the findings.  This remains true even when dealing with historical archives and other content.  Who we are matters when asking questions about how people experience the world because we, too, are a part of that world.

The branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge.  For researchers, it is important to recognize and adopt one of the many distinguishing epistemological perspectives as part of our understanding of what questions research can address or fully answer.  See, e.g., constructivism , subjectivism, and  objectivism .

A statement created by the researcher declaring their own social position (often in terms of race, class, gender) and social location (e.g., junior scholar or tenured professor) vis-à-vis the research subjects or focus of study, with the goal of explaining and thereby limiting any potential biases or impacts of such position on data analyses, findings, or other research results.  See also reflexivity .

Reliability is most often explained as consistency and stability in a research instrument, as in a weight scale, deemed reliable if predictable and accurate (e.g., when you put a five-pound bag of rice on the scale on Tuesday, it shows the same weight as when you put the same unopened bag on the scale Wednesday).  Qualitative researchers don’t measure things in the same way, but we still must ensure that our research is reliable, meaning that if others were to conduct the same interview using our interview guide, they would get similar answers.  This is one reason that reflexivity is so important to the reliability of qualitative research – we have to take steps to ensure that our own presence does not “tip the scales” in one direction or another or that, when it does, we can recognize that and make corrections.  Qualitative researchers use a variety of tools to help ensure reliability, from intercoder reliability to triangulation to reflexivity.

In mostly quantitative research, validity refers to “the extent to which an empirical measure adequately reflects the real meaning of the concept under consideration” ( Babbie 1990 ). For qualitative research purposes, practically speaking, a study or finding is valid when we are measuring or addressing what we think we are measuring or addressing.  We want our representations to be accurate, as they really are, and not an artifact of our imaginations or a result of unreflected bias in our thinking.

A method of ensuring trustworthiness where the researcher shares aspects of written analysis (codes, summaries, drafts) with participants before the final write-up of the study to elicit reactions and/or corrections.   Note that the researcher has the final authority on the interpretation of the data collected; this is not a way of substituting the researcher’s analytical responsibilities.  See also peer debriefing . 

The process of strengthening a study by employing multiple methods (most often, used in combining various qualitative methods of data collection and analysis).  This is sometimes referred to as data triangulation or methodological triangulation (in contrast to investigator triangulation or theory triangulation).  Contrast mixed methods .

Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods Copyright © 2023 by Allison Hurst is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Write a Qualitative Research Paper

October 25, 2023

A qualitative research paper is a type of academic paper that focuses on exploring and understanding a phenomenon in depth, often using methods such as interviews, observations, and analysis of textual or visual data. Unlike quantitative research which relies on numerical data and statistical analysis, a qualitative research paper aims to provide detailed insights, interpretations, and subjective understandings of the research topic. The purpose of writing a qualitative research paper is to delve into the complexity of the subject matter and provide a rich and comprehensive understanding of it. To write a qualitative research paper effectively, it is crucial to carefully select a research topic, formulate pertinent research questions, conduct a thorough literature review, select an appropriate methodology, collect and analyze data, and present well-supported interpretations and conclusions.

Choosing a Research Topic

Choosing a research topic is a critical first step in writing a qualitative research paper. The topic should be of interest to the researcher and align with their expertise and passion. It is important to select a topic that is specific, manageable, and aligned with the research objectives. One approach is to identify gaps in existing literature and areas that require further exploration. Brainstorming, consulting with peers and mentors, and reviewing recent publications can help in generating ideas.

Once potential topics are identified, it is necessary to evaluate their feasibility and relevance. Consideration should be given to the availability of resources, access to data, ethical considerations, and potential impact. The research topic should be significant, addressing a research gap or contributing to the existing body of knowledge. It is also beneficial to choose a topic that allows for in-depth exploration and provides opportunities for meaningful analysis and interpretation.

Narrow down the topic by clarifying the research questions and objectives. This will refine the focus and guide the research process. It is essential to ensure that the chosen topic is ethically sound and aligns with the research guidelines and regulations. By carefully selecting a research topic, researchers can lay a solid foundation for their qualitative research paper and set themselves up for a successful and impactful study.

Qualitative Research Paper Topics Examples:

• The lived experiences of nursing home residents
• An exploration of the impact of social media on mental health
• Understanding the perspectives of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder
• The influence of cultural values on leadership styles in multinational organizations
• The role of spirituality in addiction recovery
• A phenomenological study of the experience of chronic pain
• Investigating the benefits and drawbacks of remote working for employees
• The experiences of international students in higher education
• The impact of mindfulness practices on stress and anxiety
• Exploring the factors that contribute to a positive work-life balance in healthcare professionals.

Formulating Research Questions and Objectives

Formulating clear research questions and objectives is a crucial step in writing a qualitative research paper. These questions and objectives guide the research process and provide focus for the study. Here are some tips for formulating research questions and objectives:

• Start with a broad research question: This will allow for exploration of the research topic and help in identifying key areas of focus.
• Refine the research question: Narrow down the research question by considering its relevance, feasibility, and practicality.
• Consider the research objectives: The research objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Use the SMART criteria to refine the research objectives.
• Ensure coherence between research questions and objectives: The research questions and objectives should work together to provide clarity and direction for the research.
• Use open-ended questions: Qualitative research involves exploring in-depth subjective experiences and perspectives. Open-ended questions allow for this exploration and provide rich data.
• Keep the target audience in mind: Formulate research questions and objectives that are relevant and meaningful to the intended audience.

Examples of research questions and objectives:

Research question: How do teachers cope with the challenges of remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Research objectives:

• To explore the experiences of teachers with remote teaching during the pandemic.
• To identify the strategies used by teachers to overcome the challenges of remote teaching.
• To understand the impact of remote teaching on the well-being of teachers.

Conducting a Literature Review

Conducting a literature review is a critical aspect of writing a qualitative research paper. It involves reviewing existing literature on the chosen research topic and identifying gaps or areas that require further exploration. Here are some tips for conducting a literature review:

• Develop a search strategy: It is essential to develop a search strategy to ensure that relevant literature is captured. Databases such as PubMed, Scopus, and PsycINFO can be used to search for relevant literature.
• Use keywords: Keywords are essential for ensuring that relevant literature is identified. Start with a broad search, and then narrow down the search using specific keywords.
• Review the literature: Review the identified literature and assess its quality, relevance, and validity. Identify and summarize key themes, concepts, and findings.
• Identify gaps in the literature: Identify areas where further research is required. This will provide a basis for formulating research questions and objectives.
• Document all sources: Keep accurate records of all sources reviewed, including the author, title, publication date, and source.
• Evaluate the relevance of the literature: Ensure that reviewed literature is relevant by evaluating the date of publication and the credibility of the author and publisher.

Conducting a literature review is a crucial step in writing a qualitative research paper. The review provides a basis for understanding existing knowledge and identifying areas for future research. By carefully reviewing literature, researchers can ensure that their writing is informed and current, and that their research objectives are relevant and significant.

Selecting a Methodology

Selecting the appropriate methodology is a critical step in writing a qualitative research paper. The methodology chosen should align with the research questions and objectives and provide a suitable approach to collect relevant data. Qualitative research methodologies include ethnography, case study, grounded theory, phenomenology, and content analysis.

Researchers need to consider which methodology is best suited for their research questions and objectives. Ethnography and grounded theory are useful when researchers need to explore and describe complex social phenomena. Phenomenology is suited for understanding how individuals perceive or experience specific phenomena. Case study research is appropriate when researchers need to understand or explain a specific case or context. Content analysis is helpful when researchers need to analyze textual or visual data.

Selecting an appropriate methodology is essential to ensure high-quality research that can effectively answer the research questions and objectives. Careful consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of each methodology will ensure that the chosen methodology is best suited to the research project for writing a qualitative research paper.

Collecting Data

Collecting data is a crucial step in a qualitative research project. Data collection methods should be carefully chosen, based on the research questions, objectives, and methodology selected. The most common data collection methods in qualitative research include interviews, focus groups, observation, and document analysis.

Interviews are common in qualitative research and gather data through structured, semi-structured, or unstructured questions. Focus groups use group discussions to gather data from participants on specific topics. Observation involves collecting data through direct observation of behavior, while document analysis involves analyzing existing documents such as newspapers, journals, or reports.

When selecting a data collection method, it is essential to consider the research question and objective, the availability of participants, and the time and resources available. It is important to ensure that the data collection method is ethical and respects participants’ privacy and confidentiality.

In addition to collecting data, it is essential to document the data obtained. Data documentation should include information such as the date and time of data collection, the data collection method used, the participants’ demographics, and their responses. Further, it is crucial to ensure that the data collected is reliable and valid.

Overall, collecting data is a critical step in a qualitative research project, and researchers must carefully select appropriate data collection methods and document and analyze their data accurately.

Analyzing Data

Analyzing data is a crucial step in writing a qualitative research paper. It involves reviewing and interpreting the data collected to answer the research questions and objectives. Researchers must ensure that the data is analyzed consistently, systematically, and accurately.

Qualitative data analysis methods include thematic analysis, content analysis, and narrative analysis. Thematic analysis involves identifying themes and patterns within the data, while content analysis involves analyzing the frequency and distribution of specific words or phrases. Narrative analysis involves analyzing and interpreting the stories told by participants in the research project.

During data analysis, the researcher must document and track the findings and conclusions in a clear and concise manner. Writing can help to organize thoughts and ideas, making it easier to identify and summarize key themes and patterns.

It is essential to maintain transparency throughout the data analysis process, clearly outlining the steps taken to analyze the data. Researchers must also ensure that the analysis remains true to the data collected and avoid introducing personal bias.

Overall, analyzing data is a critical step in writing a qualitative research paper. By carefully analyzing and interpreting data, researchers can answer research questions and objectives and provide new insights into a specific topic or phenomenon. Writing is crucial throughout the process as it guides the analysis and ensures that the findings are documented and transparent.

Interpreting Results

Interpreting results is a crucial step in writing a qualitative research paper. It involves analyzing the data, identifying key themes, and drawing conclusions based on the findings. Researchers must ensure that the results are accurately and transparently reported.

During the interpretation of results, it is essential to keep an open mind, question assumptions, and support findings with strong evidence from the data collected. The analysis should consider different perspectives, such as the participants’ views and cultural background.

Qualitative research is often subjective, and interpretations of results can vary widely. Therefore, it is crucial to incorporate alternative interpretations and acknowledge any potential limitations or biases in the research process.

Researchers should use writing to convey the findings clearly and concisely, including a comprehensive summary of key themes and conclusions drawn from the data. The discussion of results should connect the research findings to previous literature and highlight the study’s contributions to the field.

In addition, researchers must also consider any practical implications of the research, including suggestions for future research and recommendations for policy or practice. Finally, researchers should ensure that the results are presented in a way that is accessible to a wide audience, including both academic and non-academic communities.

In conclusion, interpreting results from qualitative research is a multi-step process that involves analyzing the data collected, drawing conclusions and taking into account the research limitations, and presenting the findings in a clear, concise, and accessible manner.

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