Covering your Back: Strategies for Qualitative Research in Clinical Settings

Abstract

Evaluating or analyzing clinical practice often involves an analysis of the social context of care. This has created research opportunities for health sociologists to work on multidisciplinary teams with clinicians. This article gives an account of the methodological strategies that were necessary for completing a critical, qualitative study of the social impact of echocardiography (cardiac ultrasound) when used to diagnose patients as normal. The biggest problem was that physicians saw qualitative research methods as "subjective," hence prone to bias. Highly structured methods of analyzing qualitative data were effectively used to reassure physicians concerned about researcher bias. Such methods of analysis are probably necessary for "covering one's back" in multidisciplinary teams and they can coexist with a more theoretically based sociological analysis.