The pitfalls of a qualitative research on psychological perception changes among COVID-19 frontline caregivers

Authors

  • Xiang Gao Department of Health and Exercise Science, College of Health and Human Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1582, U.S.A.
  • Nathan J Deming Department of Health and Exercise Science, College of Health and Human Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1582, U.S.A.

Abstract

We enthusiastically read the article titled
“A qualitative study on the psychological
experience of caregivers of COVID-19
patients” by Sun and colleagues [1].
Although this study shed light on caregivers’
psychological perception patterns of
COVID-19 and how those caregivers
have changed their perceptions over the
COVID-19 pandemic, the limitations that
existed in their methodology cannot be
ignored.
First, the researchers should have
designed the interview questions as short
answer threads with prompts that may
have elicited more productive information.
When the researchers developed interview
guiding questions in a short fashion, (i.e.,
What are your coping strategies?) these
short questions may discourage interviewees
to fully explore and expand their thoughts
toward COVID-19 and how they personally
deal with COVID-19 fears, thus leading
to closed answers (i.e., I don’t have such
COVID-19 coping strategies).

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Published

2021-04-02

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1: Current Issue

Section

Articles