Qualitative research within trials: developing a standard operating procedure for a clinical trials unit

<p>BACKGROUND: Qualitative research methods are increasingly used within clinical trials to address broader research questions than can be addressed by quantitative methods alone. These methods enable health professionals, service users, and other stakeholders to contribute their views and experiences to evaluation of healthcare treatments, interventions, or policies, and influence the design of trials. Qualitative data often contribute information that is better able to reform policy or influence design.</p> <p>METHODS: Health services researchers, including trialists, clinicians, and qualitative researchers, worked collaboratively to develop a comprehensive portfolio of standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the West Wales Organisation for Rigorous Trials in Health (WWORTH), a clinical trials unit (CTU) at Swansea University, which has recently achieved registration with the UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC). Although the UKCRC requires a total of 25 SOPs from registered CTUs, WWORTH chose to add an additional qualitative-methods SOP (QM-SOP).</p> <p>RESULTS: The qualitative methods SOP (QM-SOP) defines good practice in designing and implementing qualitative components of trials, while allowing flexibility of approach and method. Its basic principles are that: qualitative researchers should be contributors from the start of trials with qualitative potential; the qualitative component should have clear aims; and the main study publication should report on the qualitative component.</p> <p>CONCLUSIONS: We recommend that CTUs consider developing a QM-SOP to enhance the conduct of quantitative trials by adding qualitative data and analysis. We judge that this improves the value of quantitative trials, and contributes to the future development of multi-method trials.</p&gt

The science of psychoanalysis

For psychoanalysis to qualify as scientific psychology, it needs to generate data that can evidentially support theoretical claims. Its methods, therefore, must at least be capable of correcting for biases produced in the data during the process of generating it; and we must be able to use the data in sound forms of inference and reasoning. Critics of psychoanalysis have claimed that it fails on both counts, and thus whatever warrant its claims have derive from other sources. In this article, I discuss three key objections, and then consider their implications together with recent developments in the generation and testing of psychoanalytic theory. The first and most famous is that of ‘suggestion’; if it sticks, clinical data may be biased in a way that renders all inferences from them unreliable. The second, sometimes confused with the first, questions whether the data are or can be used to provide genuine tests of theoretical hypotheses. The third will require us to consider the question of how psychology can reliably infer motives from behavior. I argue that the clinical method of psychoanalysis is defensible against these objections in relation to the psychodynamic model of mind, but not wider metapsychological and etiological claims. Nevertheless, the claim of psychoanalysis to be a science would be strengthened if awareness of the methodological pitfalls and means to avoid them, and alternative theories and their evidence bases, were more widespread. This may require changes in the education of psychoanalysts

Phenomenology and Hermeneutic Phenomenology: the Philosophy, the Methodologies and Using Hermeneutic Phenomenology to Investigage Lecturers\u27 Experiences of Curriculum Design

This article investigates the philosophy of phenomenology, continuing to examine and describe it as a methodology. There are different methods of phenomenology, divided by their different perspectives of what phenomenology is: largely grouped into the two types of descriptive and interpretive phenomenology. The focal methodology is hermeneutic phenomenology – one type of phenomenological methodology among interpretive phenomenological methodologies. The context for phenomenology and the location of hermeneutic phenomenology is explained through its historic antecedents. When using phenomenology as a methodology there are criteria for data gathering and data analysis and examples of these are cited in this paper. Also in this paper we give examples from a study of curriculum design of thematic statements, defining whether they are useful data for a hermeneutic phenomenological study

Thoughts on Siponen and Klaarvuniemi’s ‘Demystifying Beliefs about the Natural Sciences in IS’: The way forward

This is a comment on the paper by Siponen and Klaarvuniemi concerning the natural sciences. It argues that many of their points are correct but have been made before, particularly within critical realism. It suggests that the way forward is via a ‘mechanisms’ view of natural (and social) science

An Examination of the Actions and Strategies Principals Use in Establishing, Fostering, and Sustaining Supportive Relational Conditions (SRC) for Professional Learning Communities in Elementary Schools

The purpose of this hermeneutic, phenomenological study was to investigate the strategies elementary principals use to develop trusting relationships that support a collaborative professional learning community (PLC) culture within their schools. Participants included six public elementary school principals purposefully selected from survey results for face to face interviews. The study was based on Hord and Tobia\u27s (2012) six dimensions of PLCs and focused on the supportive relational conditions dimension as the bond holding the other dimensions together. Interview participants responded to questions regarding five attributes of supportive relational conditions including: Caring relationships; trust and respect; recognitions and celebrations; risk taking; and unified efforts to embed change. Training for PLCs was also a factor for discussion. The principals pointed to modeling behaviors, mutual trust, honesty, their presence and visibility, and extended time and patience for developing relationships as important factors in the sustainability of PLCs. Additionally, the principals’ longevity at their schools emerged as a major influence in developing trusting relationships. Participants also concentrated on the use of student data as an integral component in staff members’ efforts to embed change. The results offer information gleaned from the field about what has been identified as enabling PLC work with regards to supportive relationships. These results hold importance for school leaders, practicing and aspiring principals, and for institutions for school administrator certification to offer strategies and techniques for developing a positive school climate that allows for supportive relational conditions for professional learning communities

Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’: From Science/Philosophy Dichotomy to Critical Hermeneutics

Currently, hermeneutics is no longer a koinè, yet it pervades the field of human knowledge on different and diverse levels. With the decline of philosophical hermeneutics, the inheritance of a rich tradition of thought, there remains some very important problematic and speculative cornerstones and a poorly ordered horizon of hermeneutical practices and procedures, more or less technical and/or speculative. From this composite picture the (negative) possibility of truths without method and methods without truth or validity emerges; and therefore, again, emerge the problems of consistency, rigour and philosophical legitimacy, and the risk of non-rational seductions and/or ideological distortions. From another point of view, philosophy and reflection within hermeneutical traditions have elaborated sufficient critical content and devices for the definition of an organised, rigorous and controlled model of a comprehensive procedure. From this perspective, Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical work seems emblematic. From his philosophy it is possible to extract a general model of a non-philosophically-engaged hermeneutical method, which is valuable for the human and social sciences as well as a useful procedure for interdisciplinary work. This is critical hermeneutics: a specific form of speculative and theoretical hermeneutics whose methodological and epistemological foundation mirrors the new form of the contemporary hermeneutic-scientific koinè

A dialogical approach to interdisciplinarity in practice based fine art research

This paper examines An invitation to dialogue Kirkgate Market 2008, as an example of interdisciplinary fine art practice as research and contrasts it against Greckhamer and colleagues’ deconstruction of interdisciplinarity, arguing the former better represents dialogical praxis as a model of interdisciplinarity

Understanding New Emerging Technologies Through Hermeneutics. An Example from mHealth

New technologies such as mHealth have entered the health domain as an innovative technology to connect people suffering from a chronic disease with healthcare services to reduce the pressure on healthcare systems. The primary driver for these technologies is data and they contain valuable information. Understanding what the data means and the accuracy of the data can be complex. Hermeneutics has been applied in previous Information Systems studies that interpret data to provide a meaning about unexplored and complex phenomenon. This paper provides background information about Hermeneutics and an example of Hermeneutics applied in a new mHealth study