Course – Theory and practice of planning and implementing qualitative research

Traditionally, in the field of healthcare and health, and especially in medicine, quantitative methodology has been the most widely used to generate knowledge: counting events, describing frequencies, relating them, identifying possibilities (probabilities) of something occurring, attributing causality, etc. However, the social characteristics related to health and illness clearly have a dimension that exceeds the quantitative and that needs to be explored from the qualitative dimension of health.

Therefore, for several decades, the use of qualitative methodologies has played a fundamental role in understanding not only the relationship of people with health systems, but also in understanding health problems where the socio-cultural component has a determining weight.

Thus, qualitative research methodology and techniques, rooted in the Social Sciences, have become an essential part of research in Health Sciences. However, despite the richness of their contributions, training in qualitative methodology has been relegated in favor of training in quantitative methodology.1.

Increasingly, social research techniques, and particularly qualitative research, are becoming part of the methodology used to investigate health-related issues. Health must be viewed from a holistic, multidimensional, and multifactorial perspective, where factors dependent on the individual are combined with the influence that society exerts on them and on the social groups to which they belong.

The Aragon Health Plan 2030 (http://plansaludaragon.es)2, specifically in the Area 4. Information, research and training for Health, Specifically, Objective 2.2, Action 3, addresses identifying the needs of the healthcare system and the experiences and expectations of citizens and professionals in health matters. To achieve this objective, training professionals in qualitative research is a real need that must be met.

A qualitative approach allows for a better understanding of the complexity of the experiences of actors in the healthcare field (patients, professionals, and managers) from their perspective, which is fundamental for proper management. 3

However, as in quantitative research, the planning of the study, the use and adaptation of the different techniques to the objectives of the study, the execution of said techniques and the analysis of the data require training in methodology that brings rigor and quality to the execution of the qualitative phase in the research.4

 Among the most valuable and common techniques for obtaining qualitative information are observational methods—participant or non-participant observation—and conversational methods—individual or group interviews. This course aims to introduce students to these techniques.

Through these techniques, the opinions of users, patients, and healthcare professionals can be gathered, allowing for a more inclusive and realistic view of the healthcare problem, which the quantitative paradigm fails to capture. 5This allows for the design of health policies and services better adapted to perceived needs. In this way, qualitative research acts as a bridge between technical evidence and social awareness.

The relevance of this training lies in the fact that6:

– It provides a holistic, multidimensional and multifactorial view of health in which social conditions and/or the perspective (individual or collective) of health-related aspects acquire great importance.

– It incorporates a new research approach that allows students to have knowledge acquisition tools that go beyond the quantifiable, making it possible to address the reasons behind the behaviors of social groups related to different aspects of health.

– It contributes to improving the knowledge necessary for planning and programming in public health, as well as for health research.

– It legitimizes the use of this type of technique after the sterile debate that has pitted quantitative and qualitative research techniques against each other for years.

(*) The course is aimed at healthcare personnel working in any of the specialized or primary healthcare centers of the SALUD and the Department, as well as members of research groups of the IIS Aragón.