The NIHR Research Support Service provides expert support and advice to applied health, public health, and social care researchers on the design and delivery of research.
We are a national service where researchers can access the most appropriate support, irrespective of where you’re based. The RSS Research Methods Academy, based at Imperial & Partners, is coordinating this seminar series, which is focused on innovation and best practice in diverse research methodologies. A key aim is to move these methods from theory into our own practice.
- Lead Speaker: Julius Sim is Professor of Health Care Research in the Biostatistics Group in the School of Medicine at Keele University and an advisor in the NIHR Research Support Service Hub delivered by the University of Birmingham and Partners. With a background in sociology, philosophy and applied statistics, his interests lie in research ethics, qualitative methods, and clinical trials (including pilot and feasibility studies). He has published widely in these areas.
- Chair: Dr Norha Vera San Juan, Co-lead of the RSS Qualitative team, at Imperial College London and Partners RSS Hub. She is a senior Research Fellow at UCL and KCL, specialising in applied qualitative research in emergencies and humanitarian aid contexts.
Seminar key learning points:
- to understand the purpose of choosing a sample size in qualitative research, in contrast to quantitative research
- to recognize the challenges inherent in different ways of pre-specifying sample size in interview-based studies
- to achieve a critical understand of different types of saturation and their strengths and limitations
