Assessing the Quality of Qualitative Research in Nursing: A Study on Parental Perceptions of Child Vaccination in Singapore

Research Methodology Nursing
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Part 1: Assessing the quality of qualitative research
Question 1: Study Purpose/Question
(a) Did the study have a clearly stated purpose/research question?
Yes
(b) Explain your response below:
Purpose of the study was clearly mentioned in the later part of the introduction and
background section. Authors arrived to the research question or purpose of the study after
performing detailed literature survey. Literature mentioned that parents views on their
children’s vaccination were not explored in an efficient manner. Hence, purpose of this
study was to explore the perceptions of parents on their child’s vaccination in Singapore
to identify gaps in current healthcare practice and therefore help develop future
programmes to improve parents’ experiences regarding their children’s vaccination
(Kurup et al., 2017).
Question 2: Relevance to nursing/midwifery practice
(a) Explain how this question was relevant to nursing/midwifery practice.
Nurse need to interact with parents for effective and timely immunization of the children.
Through communication, nurse can improve parent’s perception towards positive side. It
can be helpful in improving adherence of parents for their children’s immunization. Nurse
can improve parent’s knowledge about immunization. They can also help parents to
reduce their anxiety during painful injection to their children (Holland, 2014).
Question 3: Ethics
(a) What were the possible risks of participating in the study?
Risk identified for the participation of parents in the study were negative perceptions of
parents about impact of immunization on child’s growth, issues while immunization
process, previous negative experience in immunization and religious beliefs
(Kurup et al., 2017).
(b) Were these risks clearly identified by the authors?
No
(c) If risks were identified by the authors, how did they propose to minimise risk?
NA
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(d) Did the authors state that they had approval from an ethics committee to undertake the
study?
Yes
(e) How did the authors obtain informed consent from participants?
Participants were asked to give written consent for voluntary participation and
confidentiality of data. Prior taking individual written consent from the participants,
information was provided to the participants both through verbally and in written format
(Kurup et al., 2017).
(f) Did you identify and potential risks associated with the study that were not identified by
the authors and if so, what were they?
There were no identified potential risks other than identified by the author.
Question 4: Study Methodology
(a) What the chosen methodology for this study?
In this study, descriptive qualitative method was implemented. These types of studies can be useful
in demonstrating health-care and nursing related phenomenon. More insight of the poorly
understood phenomenon can be obtained from the qualitative research designs (Gray et al., 2013).
Information in the form of description and interviews or questionnaires can be obtained from the
descriptive qualitative analysis. Thematic analysis is the preferred method of analysis for
descriptive qualitative research method. In the present study also, thematic analysis method was
being used. It is evident that, there is overlap between the thematic and content analysis; hence
there not should be any confusion when employing these two methods of analysis (Chesnay, 2014).
(b) Was this choice suitable for the given research problem/question?
Yes
(c) Explain your response to (b):
Complete summary of perceptions of people with respect to specific phenomenon can be
demonstrated in qualitative research methods. Observation and interviews can be used to
obtain information related to participants experience. In this, study perceptions of parents
about their children’s immunization need to be collected. This information was collected
from the parents through personal and telephonic interviews. By using this research
methodology, information related to parents perceptions can be collected; hence
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implemented research methodology is fit for this research study (Morris, 2015; Bell,
2014).
Question 5: Data Collection/Rigour
(a) Describe how the data was collected for this study (interview, observation, etc).
Interview using interview guide, surveys, observations and field notes can be used for data
collection in descriptive qualitative studies. Interview using interview guide was used for data
collection in this study. Appropriateness and applicability of the interview and interview guide
were approved after conducting pilot study. Interviews can be asked in both structured and semi-
structured format in which closed and open questions can be asked respectively. Closed and open
questions can be used to obtain both fixed and variable information respectively. In qualitative
research, these structured and semi-structured interviews proved effective (Fisher, 2011). Semi-
structured interview was conducted in this study. Both face-to-face and telephone interviews were
being conducted in this study and duration of each interview was around 10-30 minutes. Audio-
records were made for these interviews. Audio-records of these interviews can be used to
demonstrate more insight of interview process, accurate assessment and monitoring of the
interview process. These audio-records can be achieved and these can be used as reference for
future use. Sampling is very important aspect in interview based qualitative research because
outcome of the study depends on the experience and expression of feelings of participants.
Interview questions should fit to the aim of the study and overall outcome of the study based on
interview questions. Interview guide used in the study should be considered as valid because it was
framed based on the literature survey and by taking opinion of two experts. Details of the experts
should have been mentioned in this study; however this information was mentioned in this study
(Morris, 2015; Erlingsson & Brysiewicz, 2013).
Information collected during interview-based data collection can be considered as accurate data
because participants can not lie about their age and gender. Both verbal and non-verbal ques from
the participants can be collected in the interview based qualitative research. This type of data
collection can be helpful in assessing extent of knowledge, emotions, behaviour and comfort level
of participants in expressing their perceptions. There would not be any distraction in interview
process; hence precise and detailed data can be collected (Levickis, 2013).
(b) Did the researchers provide the participants with the opportunity to check the collected data
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