Methodological Challenges in Cross-Language Qualitative Research: A Research Review

By Allison Squires. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 2008

724 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Objectives Cross-language qualitative research occurs when a language barrier is present between researchers and participants. The language barrier is frequently mediated through the use of a translator or interpreter. The purpose of this critical review of cross-language qualitative research was three fold: 1) review the methods literature addressing cross language research; 2) synthesize the methodological recommendations from the literature into a list of criteria that could evaluate how researchers methodologically managed translators and interpreters in their qualitative studies; and 3) test these criteria on published cross-language qualitative studies. Data sources A group of 40 purposively selected cross-language qualitative studies found in nursing and health sciences journals. Review methods The synthesis of the cross-language methods literature produced 14 criteria to evaluate how qualitative researchers managed the language barrier between themselves and their study participants. To test the criteria, the researcher conducted a summative content analysis framed by discourse analysis techniques of the 40 cross-language studies. Results The evaluation showed that only 6 out of 40 studies met all the criteria recommended by the cross-language methods literature for the production of trustworthy results in cross-language qualitative studies. Multiple inconsistencies, reflecting disadvantageous methodological choices by cross-language researchers, appeared in the remaining 33 studies. To name a few, these included rendering the translator or interpreter as an invisible part of the research process, failure to pilot test interview questions in the participant’s language, no description of translator or interpreter credentials, failure to acknowledge translation as a limitation of the study, and inappropriate methodological frameworks for cross-language research. Conclusions The finding about researchers making the role of the translator or interpreter invisible during the research process supports studies completed by other authors examining this issue. The analysis demonstrated that the criteria produced by this study may provide useful guidelines for evaluating cross-language research and for novice cross-language researchers designing their first studies. Finally, the study also indicates that researchers attempting cross-language studies need to address the methodological issues surrounding language barriers between researchers and participants more systematically.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/057f4bfa2fd55db725c00f9b2b533ced37c812b0

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In General Health Professions

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Citations in the corpus

Understanding the Processes of Translation and Transliteration in Qualitative Research (2010, background): “As a result, it is difficult to fully understand how translation procedures in qualitative research were implemented or adopted to maintain the scientific rigor of studies, while being culturally sensitive to the populations of interest (Squires, 2009).”
Translation in cross-language international business research: Beyond equivalence (2014, methodology): “section of published articles received particular attention because language issues are commonly regarded as a methodological concern (Squires, 2009).”
The influence of language differences on power dynamics in multinational teams (2017, background): “…German as our mother tongue and even sharing some informants’ regional dialect helped us to make sense of German informants’ accounts in a way that preserved the authenticity of their perspectives (Langley, 1999) and maintained the conceptual equivalence of their statements (Squires, 2009).”