Using Interpretive Qualitative Methods Informed by Gadamerian Hermeneutics to Study Physician Engagement

Résumé du livre

This case study describes how we used an interpretive approach based on Gadamerian hermeneutics to understand how physicians were engaged in system change in a rural health authority. We chose a hermeneutic approach because we were interested in how system change had been engaged within several communities with diverse contexts. Gadamerian hermeneutics is well accepted as a rigorous qualitative approach and is essentially a way to interpret textual data that takes into account the influence of context, culture, and time in understanding the meaning of a phenomenon. Instead of bracketing preconceptions, researchers actively take them into consideration as they dialogue with the text. We created our interpretation by seeking patterns in the data through analysis of the data as a whole, then by examining it and coding it in detail, and looking for patterns that informed the final analysis. We had to reflect on the perspectives of the researchers, particularly that of the primary analyst (Snadden), and consider the concept of bias in qualitative studies. We shared the codebook among the research team, agreed on its content, checked the codebook independently against shared transcripts, and discussed the final interpretations with some of our research participants to enhance the rigor of the study.