Engaging diverse community members to enhance analysis and interpretation: processing qualitative interview data

Abstract

As the USA becomes more diverse, the inclusion of patients from diverse backgrounds in research becomes ever more important to ensuring a complete understanding of the patient experience in primary care. Language and cultural barriers are important areas in which researchers face substantial challenges. Primary care researchers need tools and approaches to include diverse communities in qualitative interviews. Here, we describe one way primary care researchers can apply an adapted, engaged transcription and interpretation method in qualitative research to improve retention of nuance and meaning across language and cultures, specifically with non-English, non-Spanish-speaking resettled refugees. We also discuss how the approach provided additional information that increased the validity of interpretation and analysis and improved the retention of nuance in a qualitative primary care study. The methodological and practical value, scope of application and potential limitations and improvements of this method through future research are addressed.