Writing a qualitative research proposal

Qualitative methods should be used when the aim is to:

• Investigate complex phenomena that are hard to deconstruct quantitatively,
perhaps as part of a mixed methods study
• Generate data to illustrate a problem and help others understand it
• Gain insights into possible causality
• Develop quantitative measurements processes or instruments
• Study characteristics of unusual or marginalised populations.

Table 1: Examples of data sources used in qualitative research and the types of
research question they might answer
What the research question is Source of data
about
Beliefs, feelings, perceptions, ideas Interviews and focus groups,
about a particular topic or concept or websites and fora, media articles
intervention or illness
Group norms and shared Focus groups, websites and fora,
experiences, exploration of the media articles
socially marginalised
Behaviours in natural settings, Observational (e.g. ethnography,
examination of situations or video recording of real life)
processes, impact of technologies
and interventions
Culture (of a people, of an Material artefacts, real life
organisation), processes and documents, websites and fora, media
consequences articles
Development of a validated Focus groups and cognitive
questionnaire or sets of core interviews
outcomes
Feasibility of a process, success of a Observation and interview
training programme, barriers and
facilitators, acceptability of an
intervention or study design

Patterns of communication, Textual analysis; archival research

characterisations of organisations or
processes
Development of typologies of Framework approach to thematic
participants or other categories analysis
What to do before meeting your qualitative advisor

1. Check the literature. There is no point investing a lot of effort in designing a study
only to find that it has been done before. Since qualitative studies tend to be less
generalizable than quantitative studies, they may not be prominent in the
literature, but they may exist.
2. Make sure you cannot get data from a repository such as Qualidata instead. It is
not ethical to do primary research if you can answer your research question using
a secondary analysis of existing data for which you have sufficient contextual
information about the population the data come from, the way the data were
collected, and who by.
3. Develop your research question and then think of possible issues:
4. Most researchers choose focus groups / interviews, with a thematic analysis
using the Framework approach, without thinking about whether this is the best
match to the research question. But don’t fall into the trap of doing what feels
comfortable or what is usual. The tables here may help. If a less familiar
approach is needed, get a relevant expert as a co-applicant or collaborator
5. Consider whether your field researcher should or should not match participants in
terms of key variables such as gender or ethnicity. There are merits to both
positions. It is now generally accepted that we all occupy multiple identities (e.g.
by gender, age, social class, ethnicity) that may become temporarily relevant at
any time during the fieldwork. But there are some clear situations where
matching is important. For example, women should generally interview women
about a personal gender-specific problem to take account of sensitivities. And
what about situations where you are delivering an intervention and then wish to
find out whether patients liked it or not. Should you be doing the interviews or
should someone else? Either alternative is possible, so long as you provide a
rationale for your choice.
6. List the inclusion and exclusion criteria for your patients and then consider
whether you are including too wide or too narrow a group and the implications of
changing your criteria (and research question). How will the feasibility and the
usefulness of your study be affected?
7. Where will you get your participants? Will you choose a setting with a large
number of relevant participants, or will you select them more randomly? Will your
aim be to maximise diversity or recruitment efficiency? Will your setting drive
your study design or vice versa and how can you justify this?
8. Usually it is better in qualitative research to go for maximal diversity purposive
sampling, to get rich data, or convenience sampling to be pragmatic. Given the
likely small final sample size and the possibility, depending on your topic, setting
and resources, that a large proportion of people will not want to participate,
random sampling is unlikely to be sustained. With hard to reach groups, snowball
sampling may be best, where one participant recommends another. But be clear
about any biases.
9. Where the aim is to develop theory, sampling
should be theoretical, that is predictions
should be made based on the existing theory
and then participants sought to test the theory
and predictions and fill in any gaps in the
existing theory.
10. Begin to think about patient and public involvement (PPI) and make sure you do
not confound this with research. A focus group with community representatives
who are evaluating your intervention as part of your study and who need to sign
consent forms does not constitute PPI involvement.
11. Sketch a brief outline of your study that you can work on with your advisor.

Things to watch out for when writing your application

Method
• Your audience is likely to include:
a) Qualitative panel members who are likely to be experts in only one or a
few methodologies and so may need convincing of the merits and quality
of another approach.
b) Quantitative researchers, as the majority, with many considering qualitative
research as lacking in rigor. You need to show them otherwise.
• Give your approach a theoretical underpinning. It is not sufficient to say that
theory will emerge from the study – this is different to the theory that oriented the
research design. For example, you may choose to consider agency in accessing
healthcare, underpinned from the start by theories of self-efficacy; your later
emerging theory may show that agency is affected by barriers to access that
reduce self-efficacy.
• Tie in your methodology to your research question and goals. Qualitative
research can often sound quite aimless and non-rigorous so you need to show
that your work will meet the highest scientific scrutiny.
• If using interviews state how directive or non-directive you plan to be, give some
sample questions and indicate how long you expect the interviews to last.
• Make sure your team of researchers has sufficient breadth of expertise to cope
with changes to the design that the panel may request. For example, if you have
suggested an interview-based study but the panel consider an ethnographic study
to be more appropriate, will someone on the team be able to manage this to a
sufficiently high standard? Or will the panel reject your application because they
cannot?

Impact
• Don’t exaggerate the potential impact, relevance and transferability of findings.
Qualitative research is not generalizable to the general population but is relevant
only to the cases considered.
Outcomes
• Qualitative research is often undertaken when
little is known about a topic. This means a
qualitative research proposal cannot be as
clear in the detail as a quantitative one. Qualitative research is often exploratory
and develops iteratively. It may be hard to specify what your outcomes are likely
to be, beforehand. This should not stop you from writing your research goals
and suggesting likely outcomes. For example, if you intend to develop a new
training programme and the format this will take is dependent on your preliminary
qualitative research, this does not prevent you from giving some broad indication
of expected outcomes. It is all right to say “Findings from the qualitative study will
dictate the format of the training programme and so we cannot specify this in
detail beforehand. However, our preliminary scoping exercise suggests it is likely
that it will involve a face to face workshop-style component and online exercises.”

Transparency in your decision making

• Qualitative researchers often must make pragmatic choices that would not be
acceptable in quantitative studies. If you have to do so, state this clearly rather
than attempting to hide it. For example, if you choose to study your own work
environment because you already have access to this, write this up as strength
that increases the feasibility of your study.
• If you are holding focus groups be sure to explain what characteristics (e.g.
gender, ethnicity) you will use to organise your groups and why these
characteristics are the ones of most relevance to your research question.

Making comparisons
• Try to include multiple sites if you can, that differ in ways relevant to your
research question. This will give you a richer study and is likely to find more
favour with quantitative researchers than a single site study.
• Alternatively, you could compare different populations within one community.
• Mapping the various viewpoints of different stakeholders in your topic of interest
can be a very powerful approach. For example, comparing the viewpoints of
healthcare providers and patients by mapping similar themes onto each other can
show you where service improvements are more or less likely to succeed.

Analysis
• Quantitative reviewers like numbers. So, don’t simply say you will sample until
saturation of themes, but that you will spend x hours a week for y weeks
sampling, until you have reached saturation of themes, which you would expect to
achieve with 20-30 participants. This enables reviewers to consider the feasibility
of your plans.
• Allow sufficient time for analysis which can take from a few days or weeks to
several months depending on the type of qualitative research.
• Describe the analytical steps in detail so the panel can see you know your stuff.
Table 2: Analytical approaches

Method What they consider

Grounded theory, thematic analysis Processes
Ethnography Behaviours of everyday life
Phenomenonology Meaning and feelings
Discourse analysis Deconstructive reading and
interpretation of a problem or text
showing how people construct
concepts of the social world, social
practices
Conversation analysis Communication, language, interaction
Narrative analysis How (life) stories are constructed and
what influences them

Dr Carol Rivas
RDS London
Queen Mary University of London