Chapter 3: Instrumentation in qualitative

In qualitative studies, if you are talking to people and not using archival data, you will design most of your instruments.  You need to identify each data collection instrument and provide the source of it, if you did not design it (some examples: observation sheet, interview protocol, focus group protocol) There are also archival data which would need to be identified and the source (e.g., video-tape, audio-tape, artifacts, archived data). 

If you are using historical or legal documents as a source of data (unusual to use), demonstrate the reputability of the sources and justify why they represent the best source of data. Then you want to clearly demonstrate the link between the data collection instruments and your research questions.  

For published data collection instruments.

Explain who developed the instrument and provide the date of publication. Detail where and with which participant group it been used previously. You then need to justify its use in the current study (that is, context and cultural specificity of protocols/instrumentation) and whether modifications will be or were needed.  

Describe how content validity will be or was established (how do you know it is looking at what you think it is?). A common way to do this is to use an expert panel. Discuss any context- and culture-specific issues specific to the population while developing the instrument. An example might be that if you are using an interview protocol that was designed for adults, and you want to use it with adolescents, you would need to change some of the language. 

For researcher-developed instruments

What did you use as the basis for instrument development (some examples might be from the literature or from doing a pilot study)? Again you need to describe how content validity will be or was established (how do you know it is looking at what you think it is?). Finally, you want to describe how your instruments will answer the research questions. 

Next time we will continue our review - Chapter 3: Instrumentation in quantitative studies. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu