BLOG – Qualitative research methods in health care masterclass: My experience

The qualitative research methods in healthcare masterclass was held from 16th-17th May 2015 at Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen. As a PhD student, attending this course was particularly helpful to me as it was interactive, collaborative and had an excellent standard of teaching.
The first morning was made up of an interactive introduction to qualitative research, followed by a workshop on research questions. During these sessions, Dr. Marianne Dees gave individual advice on how to structure research questions for qualitative research, which was one of the most valuable aspects of the two days. I came away from this workshop with new ideas, and with the qualitative research questions I had bought to the session more defined and thought.

The afternoon’s workshop focused on theory and analysis in qualitative research and Dr. Gijs Hesselink gave an introduction to Atlas-ti analysis software that can be used  for qualitative analysis. This practical session was an essential part of the course for me as I had previously only had brief experience with qualitative software-having learnt about Atlas-ti, I will now be using this software to perform my qualitative analyses for my PhD rather than what I had originally planned.
The second day of the course started with a tutorial on how to analyse focus group transcripts with Atlas-ti and we were able to break into groups to practice this analysis. Working together enabled us to learn from each other and compare the codes and themes that we had come up with ourselves with other delegates in our groups. This particular workshop really bought to light the importance and benefit of having more than one researcher analysing a transcript as we saw how different working backgrounds can affect the way you conduct thematic analyses.
Anja Visser ran a very helpful session on the second day on how to publish qualitative
research. Anja presented common reasons why editors decline qualitative papers and how we can avoid these pitfalls and make our papers more likely to be accepted for publication. This seminar will change and shape how I write up my qualitative publications for my PhD, in order than I may be successful when submitting to journals.
Overall, the qualitative research masterclass was an interesting and informative course, enabling us to work with! and learn from a network of different researchers. The  content of each of the seminars was extremely useful to my own PhD project- itenabled me
to refine my qualitative methods and from advice I gained during the course I decided to
adapt my PhD protocol to include focus groups rather than individual interviews. My
colleagues and I came away from this course having brushed up on our existing qualitative
skills, and learnt so much more.

Jacki Rutherford, PhD student at University College London.