essential-guide-to-qualitative-in-organizational-research

14 –––––––––– QUALITATIVE METHODS IN ORGANIZATION STUDIES ––––––––––––––––––A real-life example: evaluating the Calderdale and Kirklees Outof Hours Protocol for Palliative CareThis project was concerned with an innovation in services provided for people suffering froma terminal illness and being cared for at home. One recognized problem in supporting dyingpatients in the community is the provision of care outside of the normal working hours ofGPs and District Nurses (Thomas, 2000). If a crisis occurs during the night or at the weekend,all too often out of hours staff are unaware of these arrangements and uninformed about thepatient’s situation. The Calderdale and Kirklees Out of Hours Protocol provided advice andset up a series of mechanisms to address the problems in this area of care. Our projectexamined practitioner experiences of the scheme, using semi-structured interviews.Epistemologically, we made realist assumptions to the extent that the accounts given byparticipants were taken to provide insight into their actual experiences of involvement in thescheme. Data were collected from 15 GPs, using telephone interviews, and from DistrictNurses through four area-based focus groups of 5 (a total of 20 participants across all groups).Interviews were taped and transcribed, and analysed using a variant of the template approach(see King et al., 2003, for full details of this project and the background to it).Constructing and carrying out qualitative research interviewsThe process of constructing and using qualitative research interviews can be split into foursteps:• defining the research question;• creating the interview guide;• recruiting participants;• carrying out the interviews.I will discuss the first three of these here, and look at the practical issues involved in carryingout interviews in the next section.DEFINING THE RESEARCH QUESTIONMost of the issues involved in defining the research question have been raised in theintroductory section of this chapter. To recap: the research question should focus on howparticipants describe and make sense of particular element(s) of their lives. The primaryconcern should not be to quantify individual experience, and the researcher should be waryof framing the research question in a way which reflects his or her own presuppositions orbiases. There may of course be a number of research questions for any one study. The researchquestion in this study was as follows:From the perspectives of General Practitioners and District Nurses, how effective hasthe Out of Hours Protocol been in improving the provision of out of hours care forcommunity palliative care patients – in particular in the areas of communication, carersupport, specialist medical support and drug/equipment availability?Note that the question acknowledges a priori that certain aspects of participants’ experienceswould be the subject of particular attention. These were the four areas specified in the scheme