Journal Articles

Hamilton, J. B. (2020). Rigor in qualitative methods: An evaluation of strategies among underrepresented rural communities. Qualitative Health Research, 30(2), 196–204. doi:10.1177/1049732319860267

Jill Hamilton evaluates the usefulness of widely accepted methods for claiming rigour and quality in qualitative research, in the context of studies of the experience of support during a life-threatening illness among members of a disadvantaged minority – African Americans living in rural Appalachian communities. Strategies used and evaluated included building trust through time-intensive contact that allowed participants to be heard, peer debriefing and member checking to counter interviewer bias, and sampling strategies to ensure a cross-section of the population.

Simons, H. (2015). Interpret in context: Generalizing from the single case in evaluation. Evaluation, 21(2), 173–188. doi:10.1177/1356389015577512

Simons draws on 35 years of experience as a psychologist doing case studies and a background in the humanities to explain why and how one might generalise from case studies and from the study of a single case in particular. This article tackles many of the deeper issues of doing and using case studies.

Herber, O. R., & Barroso, J. (2019). Lessons learned from applying Sandelowski and Barroso’s approach for synthesising qualitative research. Qualitative Research. doi:10.1177/1468794119862440

Herber and Barroso describe their practical experiences and the lessons they learned as they worked through applying Sandelowski and Barroso’s recommended six-step process for conducting a qualitative synthesis in order to develop a health intervention, originally detailed in M. Sandelowski and Handbook for synthesizing qualitative research (New York: Springer, 2007).

Noble-Carr, D., Moore, T., & McArthur, M. (2019). The nature and extent of qualitative research conducted with children about their experiences of domestic violence: Findings from a meta-synthesis. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 1–16. doi:10.1177/1524838019888885

Noble-Carr et al detail their steps in undertaking an analytic metasynthesis of studies that include children as participants. The article focuses on their methodology, particularly the contribution made by ensuring children were included. Detailed findings about domestic violence from their study are provided elsewhere.