APA style and qualitative reporting PDF

Preview

Summary

additional information on apa style referencing and qualitative report writing formatting and referencing correctly. additional information on apa style referencing and qualitative report writing formatting and referencing correctly....

Description

APA style and qualitative reporting The usual norms of APA referencing and structure apply to qualitative reports, but there is specific APA guidance on reporting of qualitative research – see: https://apastyle.apa.org/jars/qual-table-1.pdf These guidelines were developed in 2018 and are designed to help reviewers assess qualitative work. Despite having the APA parameters there is still a lot of flexibility in qualitative reporting. For example the guidelines state “Method sections can be written in a chronological or narrative format.” The guidance also states that authors should “Describe the management or use of reflexivity in the data-collection process, as it illuminates the study.” Of course reflexivity could be considered in several areas of a report depending on the nature of the study and where the researchers position is relevant. This means that while there are some general conventions, there are various aspects of qualitative work where the APA offers no clear guide and you need to use common sense and creativity here, don’t get too worried about the fine details of formatting but focus on the psychological interpretation. This said a useful element which you need to be aware of is about using data. If you have a short extract of data this is best run into normal formatting: Patient satisfaction was linked to observing and sharing experiences of recovery with other patients and, additionally this counterbalanced the deficits of the interaction with staff as exemplified by Jennifer who commented “If it was a bit of ‘them and us’ at least you’d got some more to be ‘us’. You weren’t on your own” (Jennifer line 273). If you have longer quotes (over 40 words) this should be formatted as a block quotation and indented (about ½ inch) from the rest of the text: Participants’ accounts focused on interacting with staff as people, being treated ‘kindly’ as a person and returning to feeling ‘human’. Staff do things ‘with’ and ‘for’ the patients, displaying kindness as Jennifer explained: There’s always somebody there that I can talk to when I’m not feeling so good and I feel like giving up or whatever. There’s somebody there that’ll say, “Don’t be silly, just go out and get on with it,” that sort of thing. (Jennifer Lines 326-364) Block quotations do not include quotation marks and the reference to the source participant (Jennifer Line 326) comes after the final punctuation....