Many clinical trialists integrate qualitative and/or mixed methods research as part of their clinical trial projects. Could you please share your experiences and thoughts on the challenges in integrating these methodologies in clinical trials, and how to address them.
Hello! Here are my personal recommendations from my dissertation study:
1. Choosing a focus. If you want to learn about everything, probably you will get poor quality data. Rather focusing on aspects not already covered by the quantitative measures is a good idea for using your time and energy right.
2. Explaining the effects. The qualitative data may provide contentment or criticism but it is important to include questions or probes that inquire the actual processes. It is possible that many participants answers questions as an overall judgment about the process.
3. Writing up the paper. I had hard time to publish my paper because it gets quite lengthy for many journals and it is very painful to decide what to omit in the paper.
This kind of design is sometimes referred to as "embedding" and I have attached an article that uses this approach. My personal opinion is that most of the designs I have seen with clinical trials fall into two of the classic categories in mixed methods, either exploratory sequential (qual --> QUAN) or explanatory sequential (QUAN --> qual). In the first case, qualitative methods are used to help create aspects of the trial. In the second case, aspects of the trial are followed by qualitative methods to help understand the outcomes of the trial.
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