Qualitative Research in Practice : Stories From the Field - Blogs Unpad

Presenting and writing up
Anne felt pleased with the readings and believes this approach to
presenting findings has implications beyond her study:
Anne:
I think that this has overcome one of those big
methodological gaps in research with people in this
area about how do you do feed back. They’ve got
really good communication networks so as long as
you keep tapped into the network you can get the
information out about what you’re going to do. And I
now think that it’s a good way. Some people said, ‘We
couldn’t care less.’ Others, ‘Look, we know you, we
know what you’re going to say. It’s all right with us.
We trust you’, but other people were really keen.
They wanted to hear it.
Comments
These four stories illustrate a variety of approaches to presenting
qualitative research to diverse audiences. They all retain the richness
and uniqueness of the data, whether in Liz Kelly’s attempt to integrate
and communicate both the numbers and the underlying
messiness, Cheryl Tilse’s use of quotations from spouses to illuminate
a policy point, or Anne Coleman’s reading back to homeless
people what they had said during the research. The researchers are
aware of the power of qualitative research to move audiences, but
they do this always with a particular purpose and audience in
mind. People’s stories are treated respectfully and not used for
gratuitous effect. Tim Booth is also aware of the communicative
potential of the stories of his participants with learning difficulties
but faced the dilemma that this would largely be lost if he used just
their verbatim accounts. He opted instead to edit the text to make
the story more easily accessible to the audience.
These excerpts also illustrate that writing up and dissemination
are processes that need not end there. The purpose of
research in the human services is always to have some impact, for
some change to occur as a result of the work—whether a direct
instrumental effect in the form of changes to practice or policy or a
more general contribution to the development of thinking in an
area. We focus on the impact of research in the final chapter. There
is not necessarily a marked delineation between these stages. While
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