An Introduction to Qualitative Methods for Health Professionals

Qualitative research methods are seldom presented to medical students or doctors in training, yet this type of research features increasingly in mainstream journals, especially in the sphere of primary care and general practice. With their introductory text, Madeleine Gantley and colleagues are aiming chiefly at aspiring qualitative primary care researchers-those embarking on masters programmes and enrolling in research networks-though some chapters offer help to those who simply need it in appraising the published work. The book illuminates the philosophical differences between quantitative and qualitative research, and the theoretical background. It also offers advice on the mechanics of collecting, analysing and writing up data. With its very short overview (23 pages) and abundance of practical exercises, the text shows its origins as a workbook from the RCGP research master class series. Much of it (113 pages), however, is taken up with reproduction of the important texts and examples of published research. You may feel aggrieved at paying £18 for copies of papers from the BMJ and the British Journal of General Practice; on the other hand, some of the American book chapters would otherwise be difficult and expensive to obtain. There are lots of useful tips. I found Satinder Kumar's worked example of analysis using 'grounded theory' particularly helpful. For me this had previously been a magical 'black box', into which data (interview transcriptions, etc.) went in and the paper popped out the other end. A warning that the authors utter several times is not to pitch up to your local qualitative research expert with a pile of interviews and ask for help in analysing them. The weaknesses are few, but I feel that some of the readily available texts could have been referenced rather than reproduced, thus allowing more space for worked examples of data analysis. For novices, a glossary might have been useful: I found myself repeatedly having to look up words such as epistemology. An area that is not covered is how to present qualitative research, which by nature is discursive, in biomedical journals with tight word limits. Will this book allow you to go off and do qualitative research on your own? I suspect not, but it will be helpful if you intend to work under supervision. In primary care, qualitative research is commonly undertaken as the first step on the research ladder, because of the erroneous notion that it is the easiest kind to do. This book not only offers a useful introductory guide and source of references; it also spells out that rigorous qualitative research is hard and timeconsuming work, with the potential to answer important questions.