Process and Outcomes of a Recursive, Dialogic Member Checking Approach: A Project Ethnography

Abstract

Member checking refers to the process of providing research participants with opportunities to check the accuracy of, expand, amend and/or comment on, raw data or research results (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2014). It is a well-established and sometimes expected qualitative research technique (Harvey, 2015). Member checking typically involves researchers asking participants to read and provide written comments on transcribed interview data (e.g., see Carlson, 2010), and/or conducting follow-up interviews (Harvey, 2015) or focus group discussions (FGDs; Stringer, 2003) with the same participants, or different participants from the member group (e.g., see Harvey, 2015). Less common approaches include presenting (preliminary) findings to participants in visual leaflets (Caretta, 2016), orally at community meetings (Baylor et al., 2013), or in participatory workshops (Ebersohn & Ferreira, 2011). Member checking has traditionally been conducted with "transactional" aims, that is, to enhance the accuracy and transferability (internal and external validity [Morse, 2015]) of qualitative research results (Cho & Trent, 2006). Aims of Member Checking Member checking is assumed to establish transactional validity in numerous ways. Checking data or findings with members of the participant group may reveal unrecognized researcher biases and/or identify errors of fact (Miles et al., 2014). It enables the researcher to assess the extent to which their findings resonate with and/or are considered reasonable by research participants (Harvey, 2015; Torrance, 2012) and/or further investigate emerging themes or interpretations (Stringer, 2003). It provides researchers an opportunity to develop deeper understandings of their data (Cho & Trent, 2006) and highlights the co-constructed nature of knowledge (Miles et al., 2014). Member checking is also a potentially transformative process (Cho & Trent, 2006) aligned with the goals of community participation and empowerment enshrined in Alma Ata and subsequent international health declarations (Caretta, 2016). The transformative or emancipatory potential arises because member checking provides participants power to shape the research agenda to reflect their priority issues (Stringer, 2003

Patients as partners in health research: A scoping review

“…After duplicates were removed (n = 1521), 6684 records were screened, and 979 records were selected for full‐text review. A total of 78 academic/peer‐reviewed articles 10 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 ,…”

Ethnography in Health Services Research: Oscillation Between Theory and Practice

“…Taken over the entire process of data collection, this creates space for situated reflexivity across diverse research teams and for engagement with iterative work among differently positioned stakeholders from different methodological backgrounds. The sharing of field reports, the facilitation of member checking across the team ( Brear, 2020 ), and the circulation of process memos prepared by ethnographers and others can build a more reliable and robust collective investment in iterative processes. By working together from the early stages of research, field notes can be distilled in briefs and interim reports that are both interdisciplinarily legible and retain the unique perspective offered by ethnographic engagement.…”

Is member checking the gold standard of quality in qualitative research?

“…Koelsch (2013) posited that divergence of opinion about member checking does not need to be a "battle of interpretations" (p. 126) and explained her approach of using both member check interviews and focus groups as consistent with Cho and Trent's (2006) holistic approach to validity, which both assessed validity and provided additional data on participants' and researcher's subjectivity. Cho and Trent's (2006) holistic model also influenced Brear's (2019) ethnographic study of participatory health research in rural Swaziland. Her process of dialogic member checking increased transactional validity with richer descriptive data and allowed her to judge how well her theoretically informed findings represented her participants' lived experiences.…”