HELP. Research Question

[CoolRanchDoritos]

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Is it looked down upon if I conduct qualitative research? I have been studying self harm and suicide for about 4 years at this point (posters, conference, paper submitted) and now that I am applying this round, I don't know how it looks to be studying this instead of the usual wet lab bench science. Is it too taboo? Any advice from med school faculty and students would be highly appreciated.

Thank you!

 

[LizzyM]

This is a tough question. In part it will depend on your luck and the deck will be stacked against you because medical schools tend to have far more faculty members doing bench research than they have doing qualitative research. Some may scoff at qualitative research given that it tends to be exploratory and not hypothesis driven and more often in the realm of social science rather than natural science.
But, what's done is done and while you could leave it off of your application altogehter, that would be a mistake given that you have devoted a significant amount of time to it and have been successful in producing results.
Get a letter from your PI. I cannot stress this enough.
Go for it and hope for the best.

 

[CoolRanchDoritos]

Will do, thank you!

 

[CoolRanchDoritos]

Hmm, I was particularly aiming for research-based schools since the work is at a research-based med school actually (issue in the field is that current models for suicide are lacking and the new methodologies being used sometimes means starting from scratch). I’ll apply more broadly then. Thank you again, and for the quick response as well!

 

[LizzyM]

You might plan on targeting to schools with strong psychiatry programs (you might have been doing this already) and those with investigators doing this type of research (e.g. schools with strong social science doctoral programs that are using/teaching qualitative methods).

 

[pBar]

As someone who's background is almost entirely in qualitative and mixed-methods research (and who's MD-PhD will focus on mixed methodology), I would say it has a lot to do with how you sell qualitative work in an application and interview. There is still a strong research method that is usually applied in qual and mix-method study design, just different from the traditional methods applied in pure quantitative work. Qualitative work often requires a large amount of communication and critical thinking between team members in discussing analysis and relaying findings to theory. I would look at such skills and think about how those skills could be transferable to the practice of medicine. Having presentations and posters will definitely help contribute to the validity of the work. It is important to be able to acknowledge the benefits of qualitative research, as well as where it falls short. Mixed-method design is extremely powerful if it is used appropriately and being able to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of various study designs and how they can compliment each other is important.