Unit 6 – Understanding Qualitative Research Reports

This week has been a journey or self-awareness and self-reflection.

First, I thoroughly enjoy reading the journal articles every week.  The temptation is still to jump to the discussion and conclusion and skip everything in between because I struggle to understand it anyways.  I am learning from the Plano-Clark and Cresswell (2015) text readings, so it isn’t that I abhor reading the text, but it is much more laborious reading.  And I still wrestle to understand the content.

First leadership revelation:  I am not comfortable evaluating or making decisions when I don’t understand.  And I am quick to get frustrated, and even agitated when people (including authors) don’t help me understand.  As I have done for the last number of weeks I read through my servant leadership article, found it engaging and enjoyable, and by the time I completed the evaluation I was frustrated and disillusioned because the authors did not clearly identify the criteria I was looking for.

I recognized that I have this same issue at work.  I have been a Physical Therapist for many years, and more recently, an Emergency Medical Responder.  Because of my role in my organization I oversee a number of different disciplines, including nurses (RN’s).  I am not a nurse.  But many times I am put in a position where I have to make a decision regarding nursing practice in Home Care.  Some nurses do an excellent job educating me regarding the best practice evidence, the safety concerns, the pros and cons – others cannot.  And when they can’t, I get frustrated.  But the RN’s that can’t provide rationale to my satisfaction are no different than these researchers.  They have a different background, they speak a different language, and they don’t necessarily know how to articulate their thoughts to their audience.  There is an onus on me to learn the scope and practice of nurses if I am going to have the privilege and responsibility of leading them, just as there is an onus on me to understand research if I am going to pursue a Masters degree.

Second leadership revelation:  in some areas of my life I just choose not to be Berean.  In Acts Chapter 17 Paul and Silas were sent to Berea, and in one statement it clearly describes the attitude and mindset of the people they met with there:

“Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” (Acts 17:11, New International Version, emphasis mine)

As a consumer of research, to my shame, I do not have this mindset.  I want to be able to take what the researcher(s) presents at face value.  I don’t want to examine, or search to determine if the research is true.  I just want to believe it.  And somewhere along the way I lost my will to be a critical thinker in this area.  I have critical thinking skills, and utilize those skills elsewhere, in both my professional and personal life.  But in the area of research, likely due to the difficulties in comprehending the information, I defaulted to an easier road of either just accepting the research findings, or not reading at all.

Interestingly I adopted this “wider road” early on in my Christian life and have had to spend a lot of time since “unlearning” a lot of false teaching that I just chose to believe.  After all, it was coming from the pulpit – it must be true.  I have since learned this was a dangerous approach.  Similarly, as referenced in the Unit 5 Summary (Strong, 2018) an article published in a reputable journal has caused false teaching on vaccines to be perpetuated now for 20 years.  It is also a dangerous approach to not be critical of research.  I might be frustrated, I might be struggling, but what I am learning in this course is important.

As in the last 2 week’s blogs, for the purposes of clarity I am going to use the headings as provided in the Unit 6 Assessment.

Part A

1. Discuss your evaluation of the research design in the servant leadership article chosen. Include the article reference, quality rating (0-3) and the rationale/evidence for the rating in the response.

Please refer to Table 1.

The article I chose to focus on this week was “Cultivating servant leaders in secondary schooling” by K.W. Chan and G.B.K. So (2017).  I chose this article because of my active involvement in my youth group and kids ministry at church (which is part of the reason why I struggle to get my blogs in by Friday at midnight because I always have Friday night commitments).

There is no reference to the research design in the article, and after reviewing the 4 research designs outline in chapter 9 of Plano-Clark & Cresswell (2015) numerous times I still did not land conclusively on what the research design actually was.  Again, my confidence in evaluating these criteria is limited.  (If any of the other students selected this article, I am hoping I can learn from their blog.)

(I am still trying to teach myself how to use this format to insert tables into my blog.  I don’t quite have it figured out yet.)

Part B

1. Discuss your evaluation of the participants and data collection procedures in the servant leadership article chosen. Include the quality rating (0-3) and the rationale/evidence for the rating in the response.

Please refer to Table 2.

On first reading I thought that this section would be easy to evaluate, but not so.  The data collection may be of a higher quality that the rating but I could not identify the criteria in the article itself; this may be due to inexperience rather than it not being present.

Table 2

Part C

1. Discuss your evaluation of the data analysis and findings in the servant leadership article chosen. Include the quality rating (0-3) and the rationale/evidence for the rating in the response.

Please refer to Table 3.

As in the quantitative research evaluation, this was probably the most difficult section because I don’t understand how the analyses are completed and when a certain analysis is appropriate or not.

Part D – Discussion Questions

As a consumer of research reports I think that the most important aspects that need to be considered in a qualitative research report are the same as a quantitative research report.  It is important to know that the research was done well and can withstand scrutiny.  Rigorous methods need to be used, and findings need to be interpreted objectively or the findings should not be considered new best practice nor incorporated into current practice.

As I indicated in the introduction to the blog, researchers speak a different language than the one I currently know.  Just like I would have to spend a long time learning French, or German and be fluent in it, it is going to take time and intentional study to understand “research speak”.  I suspect that criteria in the evaluation tools found in Plano-Clark and Cresswell (2015) are in the articles that I read, but I am not well-versed enough to find them.  Just because they aren’t spelled out explicitly doesn’t mean that they aren’t there.

As in Blog 4, I can apply this knowledge in my work context in the same way.  I need to be a critical consumer of research so that I can make evidence based, best practice decisions.  How I can apply it to my current leadership experience is outlined in my introduction.

My reflection this week has led me to a few questions that I need to contemplate further.  First, in light of our studies in LDRS 500, is critical thinking a necessary leadership skill?  Is the ability to think critically a leadership trait, or is it a learned behaviour, or can it be both?  How critical is too critical?  For example, if I am critically reviewing someone’s work, at what point does it just becoming an exercise in finding fault and no longer has any value?

I look forward to the discussion.

References

Plano-Clark, V. & Cresswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2^nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Chan, K.W.C., & So, G.B.K. (2017). Cultivating servant leaders in secondary schooling.  Servant Leadership: Theory and Practice, 7(10), 1-20.  Retrieved from http://www.sltpjournal.org/upload/2/6/3/9/26394582/03chan_so_vol_4_issue_1.pdf

Strong, H. (2018, Oct 23).  Unit 5 Summary [weblog comment].  Retrieved from https://create.twu.ca/drheatherstrong/2018/10/21/unit-5-summary/

(P.S.  I did not know if the Unit 5 Summary would be considered a weblog comment.  I didn’t think it was a lecture note.  Please advise.)