Developing a Qualitative Research Proposal

Original Editor - Mariam Hashem

Top Contributors - Mariam Hashem, Kim Jackson, Ewa Jaraczewska and Tarina van der Stockt

Introduction

A research proposal is a document that describes the idea, importance, and method of the research. The format can vary widely among different higher education settings, different funders, and different organizations.

How to Write a Qualitative Research Proposal?

Background and context

The title of your research proposal can be different from the publishing title. It can be considered a working title that you can revisit after finishing the research proposal and amend if needed.

"The title" should contain keywords of what your research encompasses, such as:

• The patient population, e.g. women who had breast cancer
• Methods, e.g. quantitative research, feasibility study or a pilot randomized control trial, a systematic review
• An intervention

Example: experiences of pregnant women using in-depth focus groups

"Word count" is similar to writing an abstract and can vary from one proposal to another.

Tips:

• Pin down your key points
• Use the filter approach by starting broadly and refining it to our research question.

For example, a qualitative study in Ireland by Naomi Algeo looked at the facilitators and barriers for women with Breast Cancer in returning to work. The author started by looking at Breast Cancer in terms of national and worldwide statistics. Then moved to issues women with breast cancer experience, highlighting policies and guidelines. Next, to narrow it down, she made it more specific to work and its importance and returning to work after Breast Cancer. Finally, the proposal looked at national and cultural differences in return to work in Breast Cancer and highlighted a gap in an Irish context.

When thinking of the research proposal, it's your tool to sell the research to probably an ethics committee or a research funder, so you want to show them why your research is important to be done. Here are some prompting questions to help with writing the background:

• How much do we know about the problem?
• What are the gaps in our knowledge?
• How would new insights contribute to society? Or to clinical practice?
• Why is this research worth doing?
• And who might have an interest in this topic?

Defining the research question: SPIDER tool

Research question(s) give your research a clear focus and guide the design, research methodology, and data collection. It should be focused and researchable, whether through primary or secondary sources. It should be feasible to answer within a given timeframe and specific enough for you to answer thoroughly.

The SPIDER tool is a question format tool and a helpful method to structure the research questions. It's similar to the PICO tool, which is used for experimental studies:

• P: Population
• I: Intervention
• C: Comparison
• O: Outcome.

We can use the SPIDER Tool:

• S: Sample. Who is your population? Who do you want to study?
• P and I: The phenomenon of interest. What exactly are we trying to explore? It could be an event, an occurrence, or an object.
• D: The design
• E: The evaluation.
• R: Research type.

An example of a research question: what are women with Breast Cancers experiences attending a lymphedema clinic?

S = Sample is women with Breast Cancer.

PI=Phenomenon of interest is the lymphedema clinic. What are their experiences of this phenomenon ( lymphedema clinic)?

D= Design which could be a questionnaire, interviews, focus groups, a case study, an observation

E = Evaluation, evaluating the experience.

R =Research type using a qualitative approach or mixed methods. This is something that you need to decide further down the line but it will be based on your research question.

After formulating the question(s), you must consider how you answer it. Answering the question(s) will depend on the question, the design and the research type.

Data collection technique

Each design method has pros and cons, and the selection depends on the question, the participants, and the time scale. For example, looking at the experiences of somebody who's had severe trauma or exploring a sensitive topic, a one-to-one interview is probably the most appropriate method to respect privacy.

Interviews:

Interviews are typically one-to-one between the participant and the researcher. They can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured. The most common approach is probably semi-structured.

A structured interview is led by the researcher using a pre-determined set list of questions that all must be answered. There's not a huge amount of flexibility to deviate elsewhere. Every participant is asked the same set of questions in the same order. This makes it easier to compare answers and is often seen, outside of research, in a job interview format. A disadvantage in qualitative research is that this format doesn't allow the researcher to prompt and ask other questions, which can often build rapport with the participant.

An unstructured interview is the complete opposite in which the researcher can start by saying something like " tell me about your experiences at this clinic" so it's entirely by the participant who can deviate to different ways. The researcher can prompt by " tell me more, tell me more" . Conversations are generally free-flowing and can feel more comfortable however it can make a data comparison difficult for the researcher. In addition, it may not allow the researcher to cover all aspects that they want to address in their research questions.

Whereas the semi-structured interview is somewhere in between. A list of some questions gives a structure to the interview with flexibility for the participant to deviate or go in-depth into their answers. This type of interview combines aspects of structured and unstructured interviews.

Pros & Cons:

• Privacy as it calls for trust between the participant and the researcher with a level of transparency, but you need to be able to build rapport which requires some practice.
• More appropriate for discussing sensitive topics
• Interviews can be more in-depth than focus groups, and you can get a real sense by digging in deep when you're interviewing someone one to one, as opposed to snippets here and there from a focus group.
• Interviews are time-consuming. However, there is less potential for bias, unlike a focus group in which some participants might dominate the dynamics of the group, and people can be led by what others are saying and might not speak about something that comes naturally to them. Hence, a one-to-one interview cuts out that bias.
• Interviews can be more expensive to run than focus groups due to the time required. Focus groups, however, can vary between five to fifteen participants. Ideally, eight participants is a good number to manage the conversation while obtaining several detailed views. Fifteen or more participants can limit the depth of details and the insight provided on the chosen topic. Still, it can also be a handy way to offer many different perspectives in a time-efficient manner.

"Focus groups" can be more appropriate for identifying group norms, patterns, and opinions. There are lower average speaking times; therefore, it's not as in-depth as the interviews. The group dynamics need to be managed, which needs some experience from the reseacher .

The trustworthiness of the findings can be reduced compared to interviews due to the bias when participants tend to provide the desired answer or to be led by others.

"Participant observation": where the researcher gets close enough to participants that they observe with or without participation. Participants can be communities or groups where the research aims to gain familiarity with this specific cohort of people.

For example, observing a religious group, an occupational group, or a community through intensive involvement in their environment over an extended period that could be with participation, direct or indirect observations.

This method can be time-consuming and requires a conscious effort to be objective and gain trust to build a rapport with the group you're observing. Trust is needed to be built to encourage the participants to feel comfortable and natural to eliminate bias.

Participant recruitment and sampling

There is no magic number for how many people you should recruit for qualitative research. The sample sizes are usually smaller than in quantitative research and will depend on many variables and some considerations.

When writing a research proposal, giving a vague number is not good enough. Instead, you need to provide justification and rationale on how you came about choosing the number of participants that you aim to recruit.

Considerations:

Study design: there are various methods and approaches to collect your data, but not all methods will be relevant to the study question(s). For example, an interpretive phenomenological approach or analysis (IPA) calls for smaller sample sizes (3-5 participants)

However, there are cases where some participants in IPA creep up to double (up to 10-12 people). The smaller sample size with IPA allows for the in-depth collection of data, which is different from observing themes or patterns by looking at, for example, underlying meanings, words, how many things are repeated, and the tone of the language. On the other hand, if we look at the thematic analysis, it's been suggested to consider between 10-50 participants for participant-generated data by Braun and Clark. For grounded theory, Moore suggested thirty and fifty participants, whereas Creswell suggested twenty to thirty.

The principles of data saturation. While our sample should be sufficient to describe the phenomenon of interest in detail, having a substantial sample is a risk of repeating obtained data to limit the emerging themes, information, and ideas. This is referred to as data saturation. We need to balance the sample size with the amount of information we aim to get from the study.

Quality over quantity. Recruiting the right participants by setting up clear criteria which meet the proper measures. Sometimes, researchers might be unable to recruit enough participants or reach the planned sample size. However, this is better than recruiting people who don't necessarily match those criteria as this might compromise the results.

"Recruitment" can be online via social media or advertising posters in outpatient clinics.

Researchers shouldn't go directly to potential participants to recruit them as they might feel obliged to take part, which is not ethically sound. However, they might use a gatekeeper. A gatekeeper is not involved directly in the research but acts as a go-between to advertise the study to participants who would meet the criteria or potential participants.

When thinking about the recruitment methods, you want to choose the most convenient method that will link you to the most suitable people. for example, if a social media advert might be the most suitable when recruiting participants for a study around e-health. Hence the topic of the study, you want your cohort to be comfortable using computers.

Check out this example for an online recruitment advert.

Sampling approach:

Purposive sampling: is the most common form of sampling. It looks into a particular cohort of people with very defined characteristics. The inclusion criteria should be evident. If we're looking into women who had Breast Cancer, then we get a male participant who shows interest, we decline his participation due to the clear inclusion criteria. However, this male participant shouldn't be excluded if the research advert calls for patients with breast cancer, so it needs to be as specific as possible.

Snowball sampling: where participants refer other participants they might know to have similar characteristics for a study.

Convenience sampling: is the different extreme where the inclusion characteristics are accessible, flexible, and not very specific. It's mostly used when the topic is vast.

Theoretical sampling is when researchers generate theories from emerging data. As these potential theories expand and evolve, the selection criteria for our participants can change to align with them.

Setting a research timeline: Gantt chart

Funders and organizations typically require a pre-set timeline. A Gantt Chart is a visually appealing bar chart that helps set the research timeline. This chart is often colour-coded and could be divided into timelines such as weeks, months, or quarters.

Once you are going with your research, it's often helpful to have it pinned on your wall as a reminder of the deadlines or milestones to reach.

The Gantt chart is developed using an Excel spreadsheet, and you can find plenty of online tutorials that show you how to do it step by step. Some research proposals might seek the level of detail offered by the Gantt Chart, but it may not be necessary to go to those lengths. You could bullet point some key milestones or target dates if you're short on time.

The landscape Gantt Chart can be handy to set and show a realistic timeline of the key milestones you need to achieve.

Algeo developed this Gantt chart. It's very colourful and eye-catching but quite detailed to give evidence of the thinking behind the process and give feasible, realistic time and critical milestones for each stage of the research:

This step might not be essential, but a desirable supplementary piece that you can add to make your application go the extra mile.

Other considerations

"Lay abstract": funders are increasingly looking for a patient and public involvement (PPI). Some research proposals will call for a lay abstract, in other words, an abstract that is not institutionalized to a specific professional jargon so to make it accessible reading for the public. To make sure that language is accessible, you don't want to give it to a colleague who's also institutionalised in that lay language, but maybe to give it to a family member or to a friend who doesn't have a medical or health sciences background to see if they understand it.

"Referencing": "While most funders or research proposals don't call for a specific type of referencing system, it might be worth checking to see but to make sure your referencing is consistent throughout.

"Contingency plans": "this is where you need to show the funder or the ethics committee that you are realistic about your timeframes. A useful tip is to put in a buffer for any potential delays which could happen. Think about a contingency plan within your Gantt Chart or your timeline

"Budgets and costs": It's advisable to propose all costs and justify them and the source you used to calculate them. The followings are examples of costs included in the research:

• Travel costs of researchers and participants, if applicable
• Materials such as data management software, a dictaphone to record your interviews, refreshments for a focus group participant
• Any training needed
• Any assistance needed, such as transcription services, research assistance, time out of your professional duties and any employer compensation needed