Development of QUARIN-J, a Network for Providing Educational Resources for Qualitative Research Papers

Abstract

Qualitative research harnesses thoughts, concepts or experiences and provides in-depth understanding. Nursing is a field that relies heavily on qualitative research but the diversity of qualitative research methods means there are sometimes issues during the peer review process of nursing research papers. Mami Kayama is Research Director and an expert co-investigator on this team of researchers at the National College of Nursing, Tokyo, Japan, working on the dissemination of qualitative research methods in nursing. In addition to Kayama, the team comprises co-investigators Yumi Nishimura, Kiyomi Asahara, Yuriko Miura, Yasuhito Kinoshita, Kyoko Oyamada, Noriko Yamamoto-Mitani and Misuzu Gregg. Ultimately, they want to promote the development of the field. Kayama believes that the biggest difficulty facing the dissemination of qualitative nursing studies is matching papers and reviewers. The researchers have developed a network for providing educational resources for qualitative research papers called QUARIN-J (Qualitative Research Implementation Network of Nursing-Japan). The goal of the QUARIN-J website is to promote the publication of qualitative research that contributes to the development of nursing science and it provides resources such as guidelines and peer review experiences that can assist with this. There are two guidelines for qualitative research methods on the website: a checklist developed by the research group that demonstrates what a good qualitative research paper should look like; and the Japanese version of Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR). There are also personal essays describing how members of the research group have personally experienced the peer review process.