I am working on a secondary analysis project and encountered an interesting circumstance. One of the interviews I purposively selected - because it met the criteria to address the purpose of the research - turned out to be (or have been) conducted with someone I know, admittedly years before I met this person. This interview was housed in an open access, digital online archive with the consent of the individual, so I am not concerned about my use of the data, but rather how to best manage contact and offer and opportunity for some feedback on the research. I believe that it is important that I reach out to this individual at some point during the process. But there are some things to think about when considering when, and to what end. The analysis process I am using with colleagues is based on Moustakas's transcendental phenomenology. A characteristic of this method is engagement and exchange, between researcher and participants, that might take place during repeated contact to co-construct and refine the narrative that describes the lived experience. However, this specific research study includes multiple participants and I have little to no ability to reach out to the others. While person X's experience is consistent in many ways, there are subtle differences that might be magnified should we only allow one individual to take a co-researcher role in this project.
I am leaning instead toward a sort of modified "member-checking" in which I share our developed findings with this individual and ask for feedback, with emphasis on whether our findings are generally consistent and similar with that person's experience, although not necessarily identical, to allow for the contribution of others' experiences. The graphic on this post was created in Adobe Spark (free version) by me using the collage builder function and templates. This is a small portion of the collage canvas; I trimmed it to fit better on the blog page. On the title - I struggled with a title for this post and when I left one off, I found out that the default is to use today's date. But there is nothing really date-relevant about this, or usually any of my posts. So I ended up inserting an Abba song title that quickly inspired an ear worm...
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AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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