A thread that runs through many of the 300+ articles in Research Design Review has to do with maintaining participant integrity in qualitative research. In a nutshell, the idea is that researchers owe it to their participants as well as to the quality of their research outcomes to perceive each participant as a unique individual who offers distinctive contributions to the research objectives. Regardless of the qualitative method (in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, observational research), qualitative studies begin with a personal approach to recruitment, followed by data collection directed by a devoted interest in each participant. Researchers are attentive to how each participant responds to interview or discussion questions, behaves in the research environment, and the cues that provide a contextual understanding of each individual’s lived experience.

Maintaining the integrity of each participant does not stop after data collection. Equally important is the preservation of each individual in the early stages of analysis, especially when developing codes. This is because code development is based on each participant’s unique meanings and experiences. For example, qualitative researchers are not necessarily interested in building codes solely around the words individuals use to describe an experience or attitude. This is illustrated in an excerpt from an article in RDR on “thick meaning”:

For example, in an IDI [in-depth interview] study with cancer patients, many participants may have talked about their “relationship” with their physician and the importance of the patient-doctor “relationship” to their overall comfort level with treatment…Importantly, however, [the IDI] will not be coded based on whether…“relationship” was mentioned in response to any particular question, but rather the coding will reflect the complete context of the individual. It may happen, for example, that the interview participant talked a lot about the patient-physician relationship at the beginning of the interview but then steered away from this as the interview, and the participant’s contemplation, progressed. Indeed, the participant may have come to identify the relationship with the family, not the physician, as being the biggest contributor to a positive experience with treatment, upending the participant’s earlier definition of “relationship” as well as the role of the physician.

In addition to this article on “thick meaning,” four other articles in RDR are noteworthy for the exceptional focus on prioritizing each participant’s individuality.

“Qualitative Data Analysis: The Unit of Analysis” — The importance of selecting a unit of analysis that is broad and contextually rich in order to derive meaning in the data and ensure quality outcomes.

“The Limitations of Transcripts: It is Time to Talk About the Elephant in the Room” — Transcripts, like CAQDAS (computer-assisted qualitative data software), are simply a tool that convert “the all-too-human research experience that defines qualitative inquiry to the relatively emotionless drab confines of black-on-white text.” More discussion is needed on how to use transcripts.

“The Qualitative Analysis Trap (or, Coding Until Blue in the Face)” — A goal of qualitative analysis is not to deconstruct the data into bits and pieces but to focus on “‘living the data’ from each participant’s point of view” and to “fully internalize each participant’s relationship to the research question.” Like transcripts and CAQDAS, coding is simply a tool.

“Respondents & Participants Help Us, Do We Help Them?” — Researchers are obligated “to collect data, record responses, and then enter into the analysis with a deep sense of indebtedness, with the goal of discovering and telling the participant’s story. Everything we do is ultimately about the people who help us so that we can try to help them.”