Meaningful Methodological Creativity: Integrating Knowledge From Multiple Sources to Establish a Clinical Intervention for Children and Adolescents With Cancer

This study explores patients’ perceptions of the health-care assistant within U.K. secondary care. Employing constructivist grounded theory, 20 patient interviews were coded and analyzed using constant comparison to ensure findings were grounded within the data. Data were collected in a large teaching hospital in England between 2014 and 2015. Charmaz’s (2014) grounded theory methodology is underpinned by a constructivist paradigm in which there is recognition of multiple social realities. This was a suitable methodology for capturing the complexities of patienthood and the associated social world and it also supported co construction between researcher and participant. Charmaz’s (2014) guiding principles of intensive interviewing within a semistructured interview schedule helped to ensure that data collected were congruent with a constructivist perspective on co construction. Researcher positionality has the potential to impact upon the co construction of realities, influencing the data collection and subsequent analysis from what is known or not known by them as researcher. Reflection and reflexivity are necessary elements in constructivist grounded theory to understand more deeply how this co construction is made and to ensure transparency of decisions. In addition to traditional methods of journaling and memoing the researcher used a mind-map software package to ensure complexities within the narrative were not lost and to map researcher influences and perceptions as the data analysis took shape. This approach enabled the researcher to present an auditable trail of influences, decisions, and complexities within the findings. This article will address the reflexive journey undertaken by the researcher.