Qualitative Design The qualitative design of the study conducted by Van Oostveen, Mathijssen and Vermeulen (2015) entitled “Nurse Staffing Issues are Just the tip of the Iceberg: A Qualitative Study About Nurses’ Perceptions of Nurse Staffing” published in the International Journal of Nursing Studies is based on the descriptive phenomenological design in which data was obtained from four focus groups consisting of 44 nurses and 27 in-depth interviews of head nurses, nurse directors and advisors. As Van Oostveen et al. (2015) indicate, “the focus groups and interviews were audiotaped, transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis,” which is consistent with the phenomenological method (Lewis, 2015). The design aimed to obtain insight from nurses and nurse managers on how staff levels impact the nursing experience and nurses’ overall ability to provide quality care.

The strengths of this design are that deeper understanding of the factors at play in a particular phenomenon can be identified. The phenomenological method is not used to test variables or for assessing the merit of a hypothesis. Instead, this method is used to better understand a phenomenon. By understanding it through the experience and words of those actually involved in the phenomenon, researchers...

This method is particularly useful in filtering out the noise that is often communicated in personal reflections, interviews and focus groups. The phenomenological method allows the researcher to block out the superfluous or extraneous material and get to the most meaningful information that often exists between the lines of what participants themselves communicate (Lin, 2013). By reading between the lines and distilling the essence of the experience, the researcher using the phenomenological approach can identify the factors and issues that are most meaningful or impactful on a particular problem or situation. That is the main strength of this particular design.
The limitations of this design are that (a) it does not provide a quantitative approach to understanding the issue, and (b) it relies on the researcher’s ability to intuit to a large degree the meaning that is being communicated. Even though thematic analysis can be conducted in an objective manner, there is still a high degree of subjective analysis that is required of the researcher, which means that the data could potentially be interpreted differently by another researcher. This is why in order for…