Facilitating Coherence

Body The same kind of incongruity described in the Title-Abstract relationship above can also occur between the abstract and the body of the paper wherein words and distinctions drawn in the abstract do not seem to appear in the body of the paper. Another lack of unity that can also exist between the abstract and the paper is the order of ideas presented in the abstract does not correspond with the order in the paper. To us as reviewers such inconsistencies raise questions as Ronald J. Chenail, Maureen Duffy, Sally St. George, and Dan Wulff 265 to the “real” structure of the paper and leave us without a clear map to guide us through the rest of the paper’s territory. Focus of Study and Literature Review Although a qualitative research paper may not have a review of the literature section, for those papers that do, we look for authors to use the literature review to create a coherent context for the study. In qualitative research such contexts usually revolve around an apparent gap in the body of knowledge on the topic in question to which the author designed the study and intended the results to address. In many papers we encounter extensive reviews of the literature which seem to have general connections to the study conducted, but the overt message of how the literature actually guided the author to choose the study that was conducted remains elusive. Ironically, the gap to which the study was being directed becomes a gap in the review of the literature itself! For example, in a paper about research on pre-service teachers’ experiences working with urban school district students, the review of literature may contain a synthesis of what research has been already been conducted on this population, but the author never makes it clear what the gap is in the literature on pre-service teachers and how such a gap helped to organize the study that was conducted. Literature Review and Research Questions Just as a lack of cohesion may exist between the focus of the study and literature review, a similar lack in interconnectedness can exist between the literature reviewed and the research questions posed. For example, in the pre-service teacher study described above, if the author never explores the confluence of pre-service teaching literature with urban school district student literature we would wonder how a research question such as “What challenges do pre-service teachers experience when working with urban school district students?” logically emerged from the literature. Research Questions and Methodology Qualitative research questions and qualitative research methodologies can usually be organized in terms of those which emphasize description, or analysis, or interpretation (Wolcott, 1994). For example, ethnographic approaches are well-suited to provide thick descriptions of social settings and participants; conversation analysis as its name would imply is geared to provide analytical accounts of everyday talk; and phenomenology helps researchers to focus on people’s interpretations of their lived experiences. If an author’s research question seems to ask for a descriptive answer, then we as reviewers would expect the author to utilize a methodology with a similar descriptive emphasis. When such a correlation does not appear in the text, we are left to wonder why such an apparent contradiction seems to exist in the paper. Methodology and Methods Qualitative researchers may employ “designer” brand methodologies such as grounded theory, phenomenology, and ethnography to guide their studies or they may choose a more “generic” brand to conducting qualitative research (i.e., qualitative data analysis; Caelli, Ray, & 266 The Qualitative Report January 2011 Mill, 2003). The designer name methodologies come with well-recognized procedures or methods of their own (e.g., grounded theory and its trademark constant comparative method) to help a researcher guide the study; however in the generic approaches the researcher may take a more eclectic approach to making decisions regarding data collection or analysis. Questions of coherence can arise when a researcher declares the use of a designer name methodology and then presents a design which suggests a more generic or eclectic pattern of choices. In such a case we are left to ponder if the methodology was misnamed or the methods employed are mischaracterized. Methodology and Findings In describing their challenges in conducting meta-syntheses of published qualitative research papers, Sandelowski and Barroso (2003) commented on how difficult it was to classify the methodologies used in these papers simply based upon the authors’ self-declarations. For example, an author may say the study was guided by grounded theory, but no apparent theory can be found in the findings section, or the methodology is presented as a phenomenology, but no essence of the participants’ lived experience appears in the results. In cases such as these we wonder if the authors underutilized the transformative strengths of these methodologies or if they are not quite sure what a grounded theory is or what constitutes an essence. Another possible source for a lack of coherence in the relationship between the methodology and the findings can arise when the design as proposed begins to change as the researcher enters the field and makes adjustments in sampling and data collection procedures based upon emergent discoveries taking place at the research site. Findings and Phenomenon Creating a coherent relationship between the findings and the phenomenon analyzed in the reporting of the study’s results presents a major challenge for authors. Adding to this difficult task is the additional task of creating a cohesive relationship between the finding themselves. Mismanaging these dual planes of focus in reporting the results--horizontality (i.e., category-tocategory relationships) and verticality (i.e., category-to-phenomena relationships; Chenail, 2008) can lead to situations where the findings discussed do not seem to connect with the supposedly exemplary data presented as evidence, categories and their sub-categories do not appear to align, and the general pattern of the findings to not seem to reflect the expected output from the methodology as identified in the paper (e.g., grounded theory is the announced methodology yet the findings consist of a list of individual categories with no accompanying narrative on their interconnectedness; Elliott, Fischer, & Rennie, 1999). Instances such as these usually require significant revising and may entail a return to the data for further analysis. Findings and Research Questions Sometimes a strange and wonderful thing happens in the field or the lab while conducting a research study. A sort of drift can occur as the data and its analysis seem to take on a life of its own and begin to take control of the study’s direction. Although qualitative research’s discoveryoriented and iterative qualities of qualitative research are strengths, these characteristics can also raise problems if the researcher does not properly document these emerging developments (e.g., Ronald J. Chenail, Maureen Duffy, Sally St. George, and Dan Wulff 267 proposed research questions become revised in the field leading to a change in the data collected). In some papers we have read, this shift seems to have occurred without the researcher taking notice or the author may have neglected to revise the research question and methodology section accordingly. In any event, the resulting relationship between these two sections would appear to us as being out of alignment. Findings and Implications The translation of a qualitative research paper’s findings into its implications can present some very special challenges for authors. In some cases what is reported as implications is plagued by errors of exuberance in that the author appears to say more than what was found in the study and in other cases the errors are of deficiency in that author seems to say less than what was discovered in the research (Becker, 1995). In still other cases, the implications do not seem to be related at all to what was reported as findings. In all of the instances, the interconnections between the findings and their implications seem strained at best. Findings and Limitations In research studies it is quite common and usually expected for authors to place the results and findings of the study within some limiting context or perspective. In these limitations passages, the author might comment that the particular site or the sample might have been problematic for some unforeseen reasons and that this set of circumstances should be taken into consideration when judging the merits of the study and its results. In some qualitative research papers we have encountered a different kind of limitations section which we call the “qualitative researcher’s lament” where the author laments that the study’s limitations can be summed up in one sad observation: The study was not a quantitative one. In these instances the author’s selfdescribed limitations are centered on what was not done (e.g., random sampling) rather on limitations of what was done. To us, this sort of lament does not align very well with the study as a whole or cohere with what a limitation section for a qualitative research study should be. Posture and Language Posture according to Harry Wolcott (1992) asks qualitative researchers to assume a particular position which is held by the investigator throughout the study including when the study’s findings are reported. In qualitative research this position or posture is informed by the researcher’s choices of epistemology, theoretical perspective, methodology, and methods (Crotty, 1998) and general intent of the inquiry (e.g., curiosity, confirmation, comparison, changing, collaborating, critiquing, or combining methodologies; Chenail, 2000). As noted above the relationship between these various elements can fall out of alignment in a qualitative research paper; nonetheless when it comes to an author’s choice of wordings, especially in the Results and Discussion sections, these incongruities can become glaringly apparent. For example, in a paper where an author has declared the work to be organized from an interpretive posture, we as reviewers find it incongruent to read the author stating results in overly declarative language (e.g., There were five distinctive themes present in the pre-service teachers’ experiences.) rather than utilizing more hedging or contextualized discourse (e.g., As a result of 268 The Qualitative Report January 2011 the analysis, the researchers organized the pre-service teacher’s experiences into five distinctive themes.) that would be more consistent with an interpretive posture. Facilitating Coherence and Creating Coherent Texts When we encounter papers with one of more of these problems, we work with the authors to facilitate a greater degree of coherence in their manuscripts by encouraging them to take a more interactional view of their texts and to look across the parts of their papers. We suggest ways these authors can coordinate the choices they make within the sections of their papers and to appreciate the affect choices made in one section can have on the other sections. We also share simple ways to check for alignment and to keep the key points of the paper in line. Much of this mentoring and guidance takes place in the pages of the manuscript itself. We employ many of the editing features of Microsoft Word such as “track changes,” “insert comments,” and “highlighting” to identify specific problematic passages and to suggest remedies to improve the coherence of the text. We have found this intra-textual process of juxtaposing our prescriptions with the passages in question to be more helpful for authors instead of producing a separate review about the problems of the paper and then expecting the authors to make the intertextual jump from one document containing the solutions and another paper containing the problems (Chenail, St. George, Wulff, Duffy, Laughlin, Warner, & Sahni, 2007). As we have worked with authors to assist them in improving the textual coherence of their papers, we have also created some exercises and templates and have identified some exemplary articles that our authors have found to be helpful in learning how to improve their papers’ coherence. We have also developed some techniques which help us to identify coherence issues better and to articulate these concerns to our authors. Creating a Bird’s Eye View Writing and reviewing a paper one section at a time can make it difficult to gain a big picture of a paper and to identify where sections of the paper may be falling out of alignment. Scrolling through a paper on the computer screen or pursuing a printed version of the paper page by page still cannot quite facilitate grasping the flow of a paper. In these instances we sometimes create a “bird’s eye view” of a paper by printing off a paper and laying out the pages on a large table, countertop, or floor so we can soar over the paper and quickly swoop from section to section to compare and contrast the various segments and to judge the coherence between sections and across the span of the entire paper. We especially find this technique to be valuable when reading and reviewing results sections in order to gain a good sense of the flow of the findings and to assess if there are inconsistencies with the presentation of the categories or themes and the coherence between the findings and the exemplars being re-presented. Perched high above the paper in this fashion also helps us to scan the headings being used in the paper which can also give us an indication of the paper’s internal organization and help us to identify possible inconsistencies with the paper’s unity. Title-Abstract Concordance When working on the title of the paper we ask the authors to make sure the major elements of their qualitative research study (e.g., phenomenon, perspective, and methodology) Ronald J. Chenail, Maureen Duffy, Sally St. George, and Dan Wulff 269 appear in the title and then we ask the authors to repeat these words and expand their meaning in the abstract itself. We underline this suggestion by saying if a word is important enough to appear in the title, it should also be important enough to re-appear in the abstract. By creating a concordance between the wording of the title and the abstract, we suggest the paper starts with a greater degree of harmony and the repetition is also a good engagement technique to keep the reader aligned with the central focus of the paper. The Five Sentence Abstract For papers which present the findings of a qualitative research study, we believe that the abstract should not be “abstract,” but rather “concrete” in its form and substance. To this end we suggest to authors that this concrete abstract should ideally consist of five sentences which could ultimately be re-presented in body of the paper itself or could be taken from the paper and placed in the abstract. In this scheme, sentence one would present the problem or focus of the study. The second sentence would present the study’s research question or hypothesis. Sentence three would present the study’s participants and methodology. The fourth sentence would present the study’s findings. Sentence five would present the author’s discussion of the findings. Although some may find this process to be unduly prescriptive, as editors we have found that the formulation of an abstract in this concise manner presents an instructive map to the paper and helps authors to organize and guide the rest of their manuscript development process.