I am curious about whether when participants are shown transcripts and study reports and offered an opportunity to comment and challenge - do they ever do this? I suspect not (power relations between researcher and participant, dominant social science "rules"). Makes me wonder how useful it is as a way of enhancing trustworthiness of qualitative research.
Hi Laura,
Your post raises some really interesting ethical questions, for example about the extent to which a qualitative analysis could be said to 'represent' participants. The function of participant validation of transcripts and reports is likely to be different depending on the methodology employed and the overarching ethical stance taken. I would assume that it increases the trustworthiness of research which prioritises participants' perspectives generally and where participants may already be involved in some of the decision-making, as in participatory research, while it might serve a more tokenistic function elsewhere. While I don't know about any examples of the kind of research you are interested in, I can recommend Miller, Birch, Mauthner & Jessop (2012) Ethics in qualitative research (2nd ed.) for further reading, as it highlights ethical issues to do with the participant-researcher relationship, particularly from a feminist perspective.
Hi Laura,
very important questions, thanks for adding it to the discussion! As patient participation in research is becoming an increasingly important aspect in the health policy debate (at least here in Europe, see e. g. EUPATI initiative) it is imperative to address it.
You might want to check out concept mapping as a specific method of collecting qualitative data and at the same time using this approach to validate the data in the on-going data collection process. I have added a link to a publication below that might be of use for you.
All the best, Joerg
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16263919
http://www.patientsacademy.eu/index.php/en/
Anna-Lena does a good job of describing the trade-offs in having participants review transcripts. I do see people reporting in their publications that they did this, but they almost never report the "response rate" for how many returned.
I would distinguish simply getting responses to transcripts from what is known as member checking, since the latter involves taking your results (rather than your raw data) back to the participants to get their reaction. In contrast to transcript review, there is some methodological literature on member checking.
One famous example which I have analysed and quoted in my teaching is the appendix (pp. 194 ff.) in Paul Willis's "Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs". He gives the "lads" the last word and transcripts an interview with them after they have read what he has written on them. The focus is on his role as social researcher and the meaning of the research results for them. For me this was a model to follow, though I did not find totally satisfactory.
I guess the purpose of the 'Delphi Method' is to reach a consensus among the respondents. It gives them a chance to review and modify the respondents' answer based on others' opinion.
Hello Laura, just a quick reply, sorry, as I should be writing an article and instead am engaged in all manner of distracting activities :)
Your question reminded me of some of the research uploaded to the National Centre for Research Methods e.g: http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/3187/
Some of this material relates to research with participants with emotional, behavioural or learning difficulties and some broadly also around inclusive/active research approaches.
The search function for the site works well.
Good luck!
Ian
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