Reflections on Qualitative Research for Social Change

A Qualitative Doctoral Candidate Experience

A Qualitative Doctoral Candidate Experience Program Transcript

CHERI LEWIS: Hi. I'm Cheri Lewis, and I'm a recent Walden graduate. I received my doctorate in health psychology after completing a dissertation about healthy weight maintenance among formerly obese weight cyclers. It was a great experience to pursue this dream of mine, and, of course, it was also full of challenges many times. That being said, I am so grateful that I was able to do it and that I could do it concurrent with maintaining a private practice and working with individuals who struggle with the difficulties that I chose to explore in my study.

The reason I chose to work with this topic is that there is very little in the literature that addresses healthy weight maintenance among former weight cyclers who have gained and lost 20% or more of their weight. Even in the smaller numbers, there's not much in the literature, but it's not the same level of health risk as it is for folks who gain and lose more weight. It's certainly a problem in our country, with 30% of the nation, roughly, being obese or morbidly obese.

I chose a qualitative method so that I could capture the turning points of participants who have successfully mastered this problem. And after organizing and analyzing the information, what I found were six recurring themes among six in some ways very different, and in some ways very similar individuals. Two were men. Four were women. They ranged in age from 45 to 72. And some had their problems from childhood. They were obese as children and struggled throughout their lives. One of the participants was not obese at all until she was an adult and yet has struggled for almost 50 years with weight cycling to finally have reached a point of healthy weight maintenance.

The themes that emerged from the analysis of the codes were structure, strategies for maintaining food and health regimens, strategies for maintaining honesty with self, healthy relationships that either directly or indirectly supported efforts to maintain a healthy lifestyle, language or interventions that promoted autonomy and ownership of the program. And for the most part, participants expressed identity as a fat person. There was one participant who was a discrepant case and primary identity was a little bit different.

The most challenging part of the study certainly was the recruitment. Other parts were challenging, but finding enough participants was incredibly difficult. I looked for four months using social media, including Facebook, Twitter. I believe I used Pinterest for a while. And I also used Walden's participant pool. I did not receive any responses via that route. I posted hard copy at gyms and any place that I could, where I was allowed. I made multiple phone calls to professionals in different disciplines serving this community or this population. No luck.

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A Qualitative Doctoral Candidate Experience

I did finally receive two referrals from folks that were familiar with my work and knew I was doing the study and were able to read specifically about it on my professional web page. The second participant provided three more referrals, so we used snowball sampling, and then one of those referrals provided my final participant. And then after four months, I stopped recruiting because I needed to complete the study.

By doing the qualitative study, I was able to derive much more meaning from the material than I believe I would have using a quantitative study. Even though I used open ended questions, I received a lot of information that resulted in recurring themes, but also was able to capture the resilience required to master this problem on an emotional, physical, and organizational level. There are many elements to the problem, and I have so much respect for the six participants who were able to tell their stories and who were going to tell their stories, describing the barriers that they had to overcome and the discipline it takes to maintain a healthy weight after the metabolic disruption that goes with weight cycling in large amounts.

I believe in social change, and it's part of why I became a student at Walden. It was always my intention to take the information I learned that was useful to the public, to the professionals to effect social change. Our country is struggling under the burden of obesity and its related health problems. And this particular problem definitely has negative health effects associated with it.

So to that end, I'm developing materials for professionals, such as workshops, brief seminars, and hopefully some things that I can post online that are available so that they are able to more quickly and more effectively identify difficulties with effective, successful, sustained weight loss in their patients and in their clients. I'd also like to develop tools for individuals who are working independently of professionals or possibly even with professionals but choose to be a little bit more active in the treatment and give them the opportunity to benefit from what the participants shared with me in the course of the study.

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A Qualitative Doctoral Candidate Experience

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