newsletters, visiting support groups, using the media such as television or radio,
posting fliers in places where potential participants might be, or partnering
with a healthcare facility that services patients who may volunteer. For example,
a nurse who wishes to recruit older people for a study about their attitudes
toward living arrangements might find participants in independent living homes,
church groups, senior centers, long-term care facilities, intergenerational care
centers, and even the grocery store. In addition, snowball sampling may work
well with this population. Whichever method of recruiting participants is used,
it is essential that the researcher maintain integrity, obtain informed consent,
and have institutional review board (IRB) approval to protect the rights of
participants and maintain scientific rigor.
Interviews are generally audio- or videotaped as unobtrusively as possible.
The interview must be sufficiently long to allow participants to share all es-
sential information. A typical interview may last between 30 and 90 minutes.
Open-ended responses and direct quotations are basic sources of data. The
researcher also keeps notes during or immediately after the interview to record
thoughts, ideas, and reflection on the interview itself. This provides additional
contextual data from which to view the results.
The researcher continuously compares information obtained from various
interviews, documents, or other sources. Unlike in quantitative research, the
interview questions may even change over time as the researcher collects ad-
ditional data that prompt exploration in other directions. The researcher must
keep in mind that the purpose of the interview is to obtain as much pertinent
information as possible about the phenomenon being studied and that the
person with this information is the participant.
After an interview is complete, it is transcribed verbatim and printed for
review. Simple mistakes during transcription can change the meaning of a
phrase, even making it read the opposite of what the participant actually said.
Although most researchers have support personnel who assist with transcrib-
ing, if the transcriber is unfamiliar with the jargon or slang used by the par-
ticipant, common errors can occur. The researcher is ultimately responsible
for the tapes being correctly transcribed. Researchers typically read over the
line-by-line transcriptions many times prior to analysis and interpretation.
When researchers use software to help with data analysis, they must also be
careful to continually revisit the data throughout all stages of analysis. Waiting
until later stages of data analysis to perform queries in the software program
can result in inconsistencies in the results (Bergin, 2011).
Participant observation is the term most often used to describe the role of
the researcher in qualitative data collection (Spradley, 1979). Entire books have
been written on this subject because of its importance to the data collection
process. The researcher is not merely an observer but also a participant during
KEY TERM
participant
observation: Role
of the researcher
in qualitative
methods when
the researcher
is not only an
observer but also a
participant during
data collection9.1 What Is Qualitative Research? 225