IQRN Webinar Series: Building Rigor to Enhance Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Research

RESPONSES FROM THE PRESENTER:

Here is the reference for our article about fatigue in recreational distance
runners. It included a pretty good paragraph about rigor:
Olson, K., Zimka, O., Pasiorowski, A., Iregbu, S., & Boulé, N. (2018).
Tiredness, fatigue, and exhaustion as perceived by recreational marathon
runners. Qualitative Health Research 28 (13), 197-210.
doi.org/10.1177/1049732318785360

Here are my answers to the questions we didn't get to following the
webinar:

To what extent can a researcher add their interpretation or to collected
and analysed data. And what are implications to generating new
epistemologies as to quantitative objectivity?
Thanks for your question. So much depends on the epistemology
of the research question. If a constructivist epistemology makes
sense, readers assume that the researcher's perspective is part
of the interpretation. It is worthwhile, though, to state this
explicitly and link it to epistemology. The researcher should
include a few sentences about who they are in relation to the
research question -- so in my studies of cancer-related fatigue,
for example, I said I had never had cancer but I had worked in a
cancer center as a nurse researcher for xx years. For this reason,
the people I had met with cancer and the kinds of problems I had
helped to solve provided a context for my interpretation of the
fatigue data. I think new epistemologies will continue to develop.
it is important to understand the existing epistemologies first so
that one doesn't inadvertently claim to have developed
something new when, in fact, it has existed for many years.
I also think it is important to distinguish between epistemology
and axiology (or world view). In my way of thinking, we all have
been shaped by the core values and experiences of our families
and the society in which we grew up. As we progressed in our
education, we read the work of important authors in our field,
which also helped to shape the way we view the world. As a
result. we may now say we approached our research from a
critical theory lens, for example, and as a result certain kinds of
research questions, such as those rooted in social justice, are at
the forefront of our thinking about our research topic. Other
world views (lens) could be feminism, post-colonialism, or
intersectionality. Or perhaps a combination of several lens. It is
very important to know what these perspectives are so that you
can justify your world view (complete with references). A student
once told me that her world view was post-colonial feminism. I
asked her how that was different from "regular" feminism -- she
didn't know. I heard a fascinating talk many years ago by an​
indigenous scholar from Canada who talked about the indigenous
lens. We had a good discussion about whether people who were
not indigenous could claim to use an indigenous lens.

Thank you for an excellent talk! can you comment on positionality
statements and there role in enhancing rigor?
Great question. I haven't thought about this before, but here are
some initial thoughts. I think the positionality statement is part
of epistemology and so it fits with methodological coherence (the
first verification strategy). Epistemology is about how we know
what is true about the research question/topic and that is partly
about who we are in relation to the research question/topic. In my
view, without a positionality statement it is difficult to fully
discuss epistemology and thus the decision about which
design/approach to use is compromised.

How can the researcher's point of view be integrated with the participant's
point of view in interpretative phenomenology analysis?
I have limited experience with IPA. Here is a short discussion about it that I
think is quite good and that fits with other articles by Jonathan Smith, the
developer of IPA that I have read: https://delvetool.com/blog/interpretive-
phenomenological-analysis. As noted in the text at this website, while the
focus of IPA is on the experience of the participant, the researcher who
uses IPA must also acknowledge their own perspective and any related
biases that may influence their interpretation.


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