For this Discussion, you focus on the different types of qualitative research designs, when they are used, and why they are important. To prepare: · Reflect on the comments made by Dr. Mauk in this

Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research Designs Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research Designs Program Transcript NARRATOR: Not all nursing research involves collecting quantitative data\ and numerical values. Qualitative and mixed methods research studies also pr\ ovide valuable insights into health care-related issues and questions. In this video, Dr.

Kristen Mauk justifies the value of qualitative and mixed methods resear\ ch within the nursing field, and provides an overview of a qualitative study she c\ onducted for her doctoral dissertation.

Please note that this research study is separate from the material prese\ nted in other videos in this course about Dr. Mauk's DNP project.

KRISTEN MAUK: When you're looking at your levels of evidence, I think th\ at qualitative gets a bad rap because it falls way low on the evidence scal\ e. But I think you get very rich data from qualitative. You get that rich informa\ tion and data that you don't get just from looking at numbers.

Now, numbers don't lie. And so it's great to have statistics and to know\ that whatever you're choosing to do for your project has all of this great ba\ cking to it.

But you're not going to get the substance, and the richness, and the und\ erlying feelings of participants unless you look at the qualitative piece, too. \ I think it's great to have some quantitative data and also qualitative, \ too. A lot of students will use a post-project survey to get that qualitative piece. A\ sk their participants about satisfaction with the project, what would they sugges\ t, that's all nice qualitative rich data that can improve your research later. And als\ o, shed light on things that you might not have known if you just hand them a su\ rvey and look at numbers. So I think there's a place for both and we should use b\ oth in our projects.

Deciding whether you're going to do quantitative or qualitative depends \ on your question. And that's why whether you're doing EBP or original research, your question drives your method. That's the main takeaway point.

1 Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research Designs For my PhD, I developed a grounded theory for post-stroke recovery. There was tons on what caregivers thought and the physical problems the doctors see in stroke patients. There is tons of literature on that. But there wasn't s\ omething from the stroke survivor's perspective themself about, how did they go t\ hrough this journey? And how did they feel? And so that was something about the\ re was little known about it. So my method was qualitative. And because I wante\ d to look at the process-- process is grounded theory. So I could come up with a framework and a model that nurses can look at to say, here's the process\ that survivors, themselves, said they go through.

So here's a couple good examples of the pitfalls of qualitative research\ . I asked for volunteers and I went to an assisted living, and there were several \ people who signed up to be a volunteer. And one of the women had had a-- well, they all had strokes. And one of the women who let me interview her, I went to th\ eir homes. And so we were in her little assisted living apartment and her hu\ sband was there with her. And so I started my open-ended questions. And I said\ , so tell me about what happened to you from the time you had your stroke till now. And she said, I don't remember.

And then her husband had to pipe in and said her major problem after her\ stroke was memory loss. So every question I asked was, I don't remember. I don'\ t remember. So that was one example.

Another example is things like equipment failure. So I always take backu\ p batteries, backup video, backup audio. But sometimes you'll get to someo\ ne's house and none of the outlets work. Or you realize that your batteries that you grabbed aren't working, and you run out of batteries because it was an e\ xtra long interview. So just little things like that are pitfalls of actually work\ ing with people, in their home, trying to do your own equipment and things like that.

I in terviewed people until data saturation was reached, which is-- that's kind of a qualitative term for since we can't do power analysis of how many people\ do we need to interview before we keep hearing the same thing. We call it data\ saturation. So once you start hearing the participants say the same thin\ g over and over and over, then you know that you've reached that point of you'r\ e not © 2013 Laureate Education, Inc.

2 Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research Designs hearing anything new. And that's the point that determines your n, or nu\ mber of subjects.

So that's different from quantitative where you could do a power analysi\ s and say, how many variables do I have? And the more variables I have, probab\ ly the more participants I need to show that my study is valid and reliable. Be\ cause you want to make sure that you're not looking at 100 variables and only two \ subjects.

We can't generalize from that.

Well, for qualitative research, it's all about trustworthiness. Trustwor\ thiness is like the big umbrella for qualitative research. So when we talk about that, we're talking about things like looking at how the qualitative researcher assu\ red you that you can trust her or his results. And for me and any qualitative re\ searcher, it's things like audit trails, and using journaling, and keeping track o\ f everything.

Keeping really good records, writing everything down. How did you do you\ r interviews? And describing them and giving examples of questions. And th\ en, did you go back and talk to your participants to see if what you concluded i\ n fact was right? Did you use focus groups? Just talking about how you came up with your question, how you investigated your question, and why should the reader \ believe you?

So basically, I founded in my PhD research that there were six phases th\ at stroke survivors go through, from agonizing to owning. And they are buff\ ered by different factors such as, did they expect to have a stroke? How old wer\ e they?

How severe was the stroke? And that determined how fast they went throug\ h this process. But that everybody who has a stroke kind of goes through these different phases of adjusting to it, adapting to life, blending their ne\ w and old life, finding out why they have the stroke. And eventually, if they do positiv\ ely adapt and get to owning their stroke, that they have developed a new life. And they've just learned to live with whatever deficits that they had. But to me tha\ t was a real eye-opener because as nurses we don't get to keep them in the hospital very\ long.

When I first started in nursing, we would have stroke patients as long a\ s we needed to have them. I mean, it could be months. Now you might get them \ 10 days in rehab. That's not enough to teach them everything they're going \ to need to adjust to life-- not being able to use this arm, or move this leg, or speak. So we don't do ou r teaching, probably when we should be doing it, which is later after © 2013 Laureate Education, Inc.

3 Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research Designs they've had a chance to see, oh, wow, this isn't going away. I guess I n\ eed some help and need to figure out how to live like this now. So that was a big\ eye- opener to me, but very interesting.