Publishing articles using qualitative data December 15, 2016

December 21, 2016

Dr Hanna Kienzler from Kings College London wrote the following after her visit to the Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University:

One week filled with writing, writing and more writing! Our project “Evaluating a Multi-Family Approach intervention in the West Bank” is slowly coming to a close and we are starting to write up our results. Everyone who writes knows that this can be a ‘lonely’ process – but it doesn’t have to be. Yoke Rabaia (ICPH), Suzan Mitwalli (ICPH) and Hanna Kienzler (King’s College London) spent one week intensively planning, searching for literature, interpreting results and writing together following a relatively structured but interactive approach. Our draft, tentatively called “From training to new ways of interacting. Evaluating a psychosocial intervention for female caregivers of children with disabilities in West Bank” is now well under way with first sections already written. While this is in itself a great achievement, we also acquired skills of team writing that are effective, inspirational and, importantly, enjoyable.

Hanna also taught a writing workshop “Publishing articles based on qualitative data” at ICPH as part of the Palestinian Health Alliance (LPHA) ongoing capacity strengthening activities on 15th December 2016. Fifteen motivated students and researchers attended from BZU’s various departments (including the  Media Development Center, the Center for Continuing Education, the Urban Planning Department,  the Chemistry Department and ICPH), all of whom work in one way or another on health related topics. Together we explored and discussed issues related to “knowledge production” focusing on and unpacking big concepts such as ontology, epistemology and methodology. Afterwards, we moved into a more practical session during which we discussed the difference between qualitative vs quantitative articles and learned about how to structure and write articles based on qualitative data from start to finish. Students had brought their own drafts and ideas for articles along so that the session was applied and highly interactive.