The next event in the QUEST/NCRM/SCDTP seminar series is a special event. We are delighted that Victoria Clarke, of the University of the West of England, and Virginia Braun, of Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland, will be our speakers for the seminar.

Their talks will focus on how we report qualitative research. The event will take place online on Zoom.

Summary:

In this session, we'll explore some of the problems with Tong et al.'s (2007) Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research or COREQ checklist - particularly with regard to the reporting of what we call Big Q qualitative research. Big Q qualitative research encompasses both techniques for generating and analysing qualitatative data, and research values - paradigms, ontologies and epistemologies – distinct to the qualitative tradition.

Although COREQ has become very widely used and cited, and is mandated in some contexts as a tool to guide the reporting of qualitative research, we build on existing critiques of COREQ to argue that it is not a generic and universally applicable reporting tool, and it does not acknowledge the diversity of qualitative research practice.

To illustrate this argument we critically discuss the definition of qualitative research in COREQ, the conflation of reflexivity and bias, and the presumed universality of concepts and practices like saturation and participant validation.

We conclude that its use should be confined to the reporting of (post)positivist or 'small q' qualitative research; but even then, some revision of COREQ is required to support quality reporting. Although there are some critics who argue that reporting "checklists" have no meaningful place in discussions of quality in qualitative research, we do see value in (more loosely and flexibly conceptualised) reporting guidelines - and we share the Reflexive Thematic Analysis Reporting Guidelines (RTARG) and Big Q Qualitative Reporting Guidelines (BQQRG) that we have recently developed.

Speakers:

Victoria Clarke (she/her, they/them) is an Associate Professor in Qualitative and Critical Psychology in the School of Social Sciences at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK, where they teach qualitative research methods, and topics related to gender and sexuality, to psychology students and supervise student research. With Virginia Braun they have developed a widely used approach to thematic analysis - now known as reflexive thematic analysis - and have written extensively around this, including their book Thematic Analysis: A Practical Guide (2022, Sage) and website www.thematicanalysis.net. They have also written more widely around qualitative methods including most recently matters of quality in qualitative research and qualitative research reporting.

Virginia Braun (she/her, they/them) is a Professor in Psychology at Waipapa Taumata Rau the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, where they research, teach and supervise qualitative research methods, and topics related to gender, sexuality and health. With Victoria Clarke, they have developed an approach to thematic analysis – now referred to as reflexive thematic analysis – and have written extensively around this, including in their 2022 book Thematic Analysis: A Practical Guide (Sage) and their website www.thematicanalysis.net. Other qualitative methodologies they have explored (with others) include story completion (see www.storycompletion.net) and qualitative surveys, and currently (with Victoria) they are orienting to matters of quality in qualitative research.

Is COREQ a useful tool to guide the reporting of qualitative research?