Qualitative Research in Healthcare
Research design is often qualified into two categories: qualitative research or quantitative research. The former leaves room for respondent explanation, while the latter is composed of pure data. There is a debate on the importance of qualitative research in business, but especially so in healthcare administration. Quantitative research does not leave room for a respondent to explain him or herself and why a survey was answered in a certain way. Qualitative research gives a look into the inductive side of research of how a patient is thinking and feeling in a situation, and not just from the doctors and nurses charting. It leaves room for explanation, completing data research and giving a full, comprehensive look into overall patient care.
Qualitative Research Methodology
Qualitative research methods and tools, when administrated and interpreted by a skilled researcher, can aid in professional decision making in Healthcare Administration.
Methods
There are different ways to approach gathering research of the qualitative nature. In health care, two different methods seem to make sense, which are phenomenology and ethnography. According to Al-Busaidi (2008), phenomenology is “exploring how human beings make sense of experience and the meaning they give to these experiences” (p. 13). Phenomenology is how we interpret our own experience, and the idea is to find a common theme to these experiences in research. In doing so, researchers can predict a certain phenomenon based on the treatment given in a healthcare treatment center. The researcher often needs to be able to listen and if care standards encompass these ideas found in research, and if they are applied, satisfaction of care should be inevitable.
Ethnography is the other effective qualitative research approach used in healthcare. “The aim of ethnographic studies is to give a holistic picture of the social group studied, attempting to describe aspects of that particular group” (Al-Busaidi, 13). Seeing the root word ethno-, we can see that each group studied would have something in common, be it culture, religion, social-class, or the like. Ethnographic data can be collected in the form of interviews and observations of the specified group of people.
Tools
The interview is an effective and fitting tool for qualitative healthcare research. Interviews could be done either individually or in a focus-group setting. Focus groups should be kept to a small number in order for participants to be able to interact with one another and contribute feelings. However, some may not want to reveal sensitive information, so in this case, an interview may be more appropriate so the participant can be straightforward an honest, while being able to keep his or her experiences anonymous.
Rationale
According to Margaret Roller (2016), qualitative data is not, and should not be used as “absolute ‘truth’ but, useful knowledge that is the matter of the researcher’s own
subjective interpretation.” What she is suggesting is that this sort of research is subjective, and each case is circumstantial, but it can help guide the researcher as …
