Qualitative Descriptive Methods in Health Science Research
By Karen Colorafi, B. Evans. HERD, 2016
1,298 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Objective: The purpose of this methodology paper is to describe an approach to qualitative design known as qualitative descriptive that is well suited to junior health sciences researchers because it can be used with a variety of theoretical approaches, sampling techniques, and data collection strategies. Background: It is often difficult for junior qualitative researchers to pull together the tools and resources they need to embark on a high-quality qualitative research study and to manage the volumes of data they collect during qualitative studies. This paper seeks to pull together much needed resources and provide an overview of methods. Methods: A step-by-step guide to planning a qualitative descriptive study and analyzing the data is provided, utilizing exemplars from the authors’ research. Results: This paper presents steps to conducting a qualitative descriptive study under the following headings: describing the qualitative descriptive approach, designing a qualitative descriptive study, steps to data analysis, and ensuring rigor of findings. Conclusions: The qualitative descriptive approach results in a summary in everyday, factual language that facilitates understanding of a selected phenomenon across disciplines of health science researchers.
Subfields: Education, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/952241d28abed7d221fc059845043a6463a522bc
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In Education
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- Describing Populations and Samples in Doctoral Student Research (2021, methodology): “Recalling that the unit of analysis is the unit about which data are collected, Colorafi and Evans (2016) describe the data as being applied toward understanding the phenomenon of interest, while Magilvy and Thomas (2009) describe the data analysis for making sense and understanding the phenomenon…”
- Employing a Qualitative Description Approach in Health Care Research (2017, neutral): “Data collection methods in qualitative description designs can include interviews, focus groups, observation, or document review (Colorafi & Evans, 2016).”
- The Experience of COVID-19 and Its Impact on Teachers’ Mental Health, Coping, and Teaching (2021, methodology): “We applied descriptive coding methodology to complete a content analysis of the qualitative data gathered in the survey (Christians & Carey; Colorafi & Evans, 2016; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2010).”