Noriko Yamamoto-Mitani, Ph.D., R.N.
Dept. of Gerontological Homecare & Long-term Care Nursing. Graduate School of Medicine
The University of Tokyo
“I would like to see 100 research papers published using ‘Case Study to Focus on the Meaning of Care’ by the time I retire!”
That is what I thought when a group of interested researchers including myself started developing a new research method “Case Study to Focus on the Meaning of Care.” Actually, however, it was not an easy task. One of the slowest stages in the publishing attempt was the peer review process. The biggest hope we had in developing this method was to have a new research method to share and disseminate practical knowledge of good nursing and care to as many people as possible, so that more nurses would be able to provide better care. The most important questions were: “How can we express the excellence of this practice, and what clues can we provide to others who want to use it as a reference?” Because we placed our utmost priority in these questions, we were rather unprepared for the journal peer review process, in which most reviewers assumed the rigorous positivism as the basis of their review.
I am not saying that any case studies should be accepted unscreened in the review process. We believe that rigor is also indispensable for the readers to feel comfortable to use the findings, although the rigor may be different from the ones for traditional positivism. We began to examine the breadth of existing literature and learn how tacit knowledge of interpersonal caring practices has been handled in fields such as phenomenology, philosophy, clinical psychology, management, education, anthropology, and sociology.
Tacit knowledge of interpersonal caring practice is characterized by its holistic, individual, and contextual nature, and does not fit the assumptions of conventional positivist research approaches (elemental reduction, commonality, and non-contextuality). However, we have not found any established measures to evaluate rigor in such case studies of interpersonal caring practice. We created a draft of evaluation criteria for rigor (Table 1), based on some qualitative studies that did not assume a positivist approach nor restrict the practical nature of the findings. This is still a draft, and we would like to further develop it with your input. We hope that the more and more reviewers will gradually share and generalize the indicators of rigor applicable to case studies of interpersonal caring practice, which is different from the positivist style, and that accurate and constructive peer review will be provided.
I cannot retire until I see 100 case study research papers (LOL).
(Click to enlarge) | Download PDF of table
Source: Yamamoto-Mitani, N. (2020). Proposal and possibility of peer review criteria for case studies on nursing practice. Nursing Research 53(4), 304-310. (partially modified from the table on p.305).