If the audience is nursing students, the focus will be different from a focus for
registered nurses who are working on their master’s degrees and different still
if the readers are interdisciplinary team members outside of nursing.
Patton (1990) stated that the most important aspect of reporting is focus.
When writing qualitative research reports, researchers must take care to in-
clude enough detail but not too much so as to preclude the major purpose of
communicating useful, evidence-based information that influences practice.
“Sufficient description and direct quotations should be included to allow the
reader to enter into the situation and thoughts of the people represented in
the report. Description should stop short, however, of becoming trivial and
mundane” (Patton, 1990, p. 430). Sandelowski summarized her view by saying,
“I think one of the hallmarks of a good qualitative researcher is someone who
writes in a very accessible way for particular audiences” (Morse, 1994, p. 280).
Some differences in reporting formats among the four major types of qualitative
research should also be noted. In phenomenological research, researchers can use
realist tales, confessionist tales, or impressionist tales when writing. The choice
depends on the audience and certainly on the sample size. If the sample is small,
perhaps a storytelling approach would best convey the participants’ experiences.
The personal narrative, as a way of conveying the meaning of experiences, has
recently received increased attention. Gaydos (2005) suggested that nurses can
use their intuition to assist key informants who are ready to tell their stories in
a type of cocreation of a personal narrative by using memories and metaphors.
“The experience of creating a self story with a nurse can be healing, as the self
story is heard by a caring person, memories are understood in new ways, and
the self story is both confirmed and recreated” (Gaydos, 2005, p. 254). This
may represent yet another way to report information about lived experience.
Grounded theory, conversely, is often presented more traditionally because it
seeks to communicate a process that the researcher has discovered, lending itself
to a more detached, analytic mode of reporting. So, although one could use a
variety of voices in reporting qualitative data, it is key to focus the report to the
audiences and choose the best approach to communicate with that audience.
With ethnography, researchers often choose the realist voice, but perhaps
the impressionist tale would be better to describe information about a certain
concept with a different culture. For example, if a researcher was studying death
and burial practices of an unknown tribe in the jungle, perhaps a storytelling
approach would be the most effective way to communicate the message learned
from the research. Henderson (2005) suggested that dramaturgy (a description
of the scene or social situation that is similar to a play) be included in field notes
and reported in conjunction with ethnography to better explain the societal
context of social activity.KEY TERM
personal narrative:
A way of conveying
the meaning
of experiences
through storytelling390 CHAPTER 14 What Do the Qualitative Data Mean?