Nursing research involves the use numerous research designs- one of these is the qualitative research design. Qualitative research typically aims to understand and interpret social interactions through open-ended responses, survey, interviews, participant observations, field notes and reflections. Due to its individualistic approach, qualitative research designs pose a high degree of subjectivity or bias on the part of the researcher. Further, due to the research’s subjective, comprehensive, in-depth and holistic scope, qualitative research data are often documented in a lengthy, verbose and voluminous manner. This manner of documentation requires time and effort on the part of researcher. Thus, various ways to lessen the demand of time and effort in documenting qualitative research data may be sought by the researcher. Some of these include utilizing close ended interviews, likert-scale survey questionnaires, survey questionnaires with preconceived choices (multiple choice). For responses obtained from open ended interviews or survey questionnaire, the researcher may collate them based on the similarities of response to eliminate redundancy. Further, for grounded data analysis (i.e., for phenomenological research), the researcher may opt to utilize video, photos or audio recordings of the phenomenon being studied (i.e., patient’s response to an intervention). Subsequently, these recordings or photo may be summarized by the researcher in narrative form, taking into account the significant observations noted on the said recordings or photo.
There are various methods on how to simplify the documentation process in a qualitative research. The organization and management of data and findings obtained from this type of research are essential to simplify the tasks of researcher. Further, the utilization of methods to efficiently organize and manage qualitative research data is discretionary on the part of the researcher as long as the validity, reliability and ethical considerations on research undertaking are given the highest significance (Robley, 1995).
Reference
Robley, L. R. (1995). The ethics of qualitative nursing research. Journal of Professional Nursing, 11(1), 45-48.
