International Journal of Qualitative Methods

Background: The current sports context appears to place adolescent athletes at risk for developing disordered eating behaviors, particularly in lean sports such as synchronized swimming. However, an athlete’s eating behavior changes over the course of a sports season and is influenced by various factors (e.g., pressures related to weight and appearance, body dissatisfaction, self-esteem), as well as by stress levels. To date, only a few studies have examined these variations or explored the effects of stress on eating behavior during a sports season, but understanding how athletes navigate the spectrum of eating behaviors over time is of paramount importance for preventive approaches. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of individual daily stress on eating behavior within different seasonal periods. Methods: A longitudinal mixed methods design is used to capture changes of disordered eating behaviors, levels of stress and other influencing factors. A total of 10 participants practicing synchronized swimming (aged 14–20 years) are followed during their sports season and asked to respond to online questionnaires, narrative and self-confrontation interviews, and to wear an electrocardiogram during several days at four time points (at the beginning of the sports season (baseline), during the first and the second competition, and at the end of the season). Discussion: The trajectories of athletes’ eating behaviors and the impact of stress and other influencing factors during a sports season can contribute to a better understanding of potential risk conditions where young athletes might perceive themselves as more vulnerable. Identifying these high-risk moments and contexts could be useful in enhancing efforts to prevent disordered eating behaviors in adolescent athletes.

The COVID-19 pandemic and other major contextual circumstances, including the aftermath of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in Hong Kong between 2019 and 2020, underline the necessity to reconsider contingency for qualitative researchers with local and transnational interests. These circumstances of contingency are complex and multi-layered. This article describes the experience of designing and conducting in-person field research on inclusive pedagogical practice with teachers in Hong Kong during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study utilised a multiple case study approach and adopted teacher interviews and lesson observations as primary sources of evidence. The article demonstrates that maintaining contextual sensitivity and methodological flexibility, as well as appreciating the contingent and ongoing nature of qualitative inquiry, are essential to upholding research rigour. The article concludes by discussing the need to recognise contingency as fundamental to real-world qualitative research. It argues that weaving contingency into the design and conduct of qualitative studies is therefore pivotal to capturing worthwhile evidence and contributing to robust knowledge.

Researchers employ numerous methods to explore phenomena, but few studies feature linguistic prompts as a primary data collection strategy. This paper will describe the use of linguistic analysis to uncover organizational culture, grounded in Schein’s (2010a, 2020) levels of culture and Whitcomb and Deshler’s (1983) linguistic analysis framework. The notion that individuals experience culture at a profound and subconscious level and express their response to that culture through their use of language has practical applications in many qualitative approaches. Linguistic perspectives reveal how participants perceive the organizational ethos and observable forms; how they view themselves and other culture-bearers; how they perceive cultural norms, beliefs, and assumptions; how they assimilate newcomers; how they place themselves within their organizational culture, distinguishing individual self-consciousness versus group self-consciousness; and how they describe the workings of their organization. The very nature of the problem, i.e., asking individuals to describe culture through essence statements, storytelling, free word association, metaphors, similes, and cultural references, elicits rich, personal insights about an organization. Whitcomb and Deshler’s (1983) three levels of thematic, emotional-barometer, and cultural values clusters enable researchers to uncover cultural patterns in the language participants choose, probing cultural conditions where the importance of context, setting, organizational fit, and the culture bearer’s frame of reference are pivotal (Schein, 2010a). Although this study specifically pertains to the study of organizational culture, this method can be effectively applied in all disciplines.

Many key groups of people (e.g., older people, disabled people and minoritised people) are at risk of being excluded from research, which will affect the generalisability, quality, relevance, and integrity of the research findings and conclusions. However, ways of making research more inclusive have not been adequately explored. Appropriate strategies to maximise the participation of marginalised populations with diverse viewpoints, expertise, and experience are needed to enable them to make meaningful contributions. In this article, we draw lessons from four case studies that used Group Concept Mapping (a type of participatory, consensus research to generate agreement around a topic of interest within a group, community or society). We reflect on how our research was adapted to engage people with diverse needs (e.g., older/frail people, disabled people, people with language barriers, bilingual participants, and people lacking digital skills) in research. This paper highlights the importance of participatory, time and resources, ethical, and intersectionality considerations to enable marginalised populations to be heard and make significant contributions to research.

Background: The Icelandic Prevention Model (IPM) represents a promising practice for youth substance use prevention. It applies a community-driven primary prevention approach that is designed to create healthy contexts. Lanark County was the first community in Canada to adopt the IPM and has been pioneering a youth engagement approach to support the implementation. This paper describes the early findings related to a participatory evaluation that was co-designed with young people and focuses on examining youth perspectives on community needs and substance use issues. Method: Our approach integrated three levels of youth involvement, including co-design with youth advisors, collaborative asset mapping and community consultations. For the consultations, semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with 10 young people. A thematic analysis was applied using NVivo software. Results: Thematic analyses of the consultation interviews identified four themes: (1) Social norms and accessibility as influences in youth substance use behaviours, (2), Lack of activities, (3) Intersectional discrimination and (4) Youth suggestions for strategies to enhance the community. Discussion: This research represents a novel participatory approach that includes youth in the strategic design and evaluation of the IPM. It highlights issues related to implementation and the added value of youth perspectives. Our multi-level approach enabled the meaningful engagement of young people within a complex prevention initiative. Findings will support the ongoing efforts in Lanark County and serve to inform other IPM implementations, as well as upstream prevention initiatives that integrate youth engagement.

Background: Work-family interaction is defined as a process in which the functioning behavior) of a worker in one domain (e.g., home) is influenced by strain reactions (negative or positive) accumulated in the other domain (e.g., work). Previous studies have reported work-family interaction as challenging and considered one of the most prevalent psychosocial risks in Chile. Among occupational groups, nursing has been highlighted as one of the most affected due to the high representation of women in the profession and demanding working conditions. However, limited research has explored work-family interaction as a social process, particularly within the context of critical care units which are characterized by high levels of stress. Aim: To theorize the work-family interaction process among nurses in intensive care units. Design: A qualitative study will be conducted using constructivist grounded theory, underpinned by symbolic interactionism as the theoretical-methodological framework. Methods: The sampling strategy will be intentional and theoretical. Data collection will involve in-depth interviews, non-participant observations, and document analysis. The study will take place in two inpatient healthcare centers in Chile—one public and one private—one of which is the largest in the country. Data analysis will use constant comparison methods and multilevel coding. To ensure rigor, the project is structured according to the 13 criteria proposed by Charmaz and Thornberg for constructivist grounded theory studies. The project has been approved by the Scientific Ethics Committee. Conclusion: The resulting theory will offer valuable insights into the work-family interaction process among nurses in intensive care units, providing a solid theoretical foundation for its understanding and subsequent management. It is anticipated to be useful for education in the field, institutional decision-makers, and the development of public policies.

Drawing on our experience developing a visual polyvocal narrative of the immigration system in Canada and Brazil, we explore the role of artificial intelligence (AI) image generation as a tool for supporting interview participants in articulating their experiences. We found that the AI image generation process supported participants’ ability to reflect and express their experiences. However, there were several challenges due to technological limitations and inherent biases embedded in the AI, which resulted in unsatisfactory images and repeated image generation attempts. We came to conceptualize the AI image generation tool as a third agent in the interview process, facilitating access to artistic expression yet introducing content into the conversation. We identified five primary roles played by the AI image generation tool in the interview process: Helper (supported the image generation process), Distractor (transferred attention from the topic of study to prompt engineering), Motivator (motivated participants to better articulate their vision), Influencer (introduced content in the conversation), and Facilitator (facilitated reflection and sensemaking). We discuss avenues for maximizing the benefits of AI image generation in interviewing and mitigating its challenges. We contribute to a growing body of research on reflective and arts-based interventions in interviewing by illustrating the role new technologies can play in advancing the potential of interview-based research.

Ensuring effective learning and teaching requires a strong assessment culture in schools where teachers and students are supported to use assessment to increase student outcomes. However, building a strong assessment culture requires a deeper analysis of the personal, social-emotional, conceptual, paradigmatic, practical, contextual, structural, organisational and policy contexts of the school to determine the best strategies to implement to achieve the aims of the reforms. This protocol paper demonstrates how we will help schools develop their assessment culture. We will use situational analysis to explore the various elements influencing the school’s assessment culture to gain an in-depth understanding of the situation. In addition, we will use activity theory to understand the patterns of social activities and the relationships of various elements to develop a strong assessment culture.

This qualitative study protocol outlines a co-creation project between researchers and the Swedish police to improve cross-functional collaboration in online child sexual abuse (CSA) investigations. Online CSA cases are complex and require extensive collaboration between prosecutors, IT forensic expertise, and investigators with expertise in child sexual offenses. Despite the recognized need for cross-functional teamwork, research evaluating methods for such collaboration in crime investigations, especially in online CSA, is scarce. This project, funded by the Swedish research agency FORTE (2023-00085), addresses this gap by employing the ‘double diamond’ co-creation framework (discovery, define, develop, deliver) to co-create, implement, and evaluate a team-based intervention within three online CSA units in northern Sweden. Data collection will involve semi-structured interviews (n ≈ 35), participant observations of workshops, workshop appraisals, document analysis, and analysis of organizational metrics. The project aims to: (1) identify challenges and potentials for cross-functional teamwork in online CSA investigations; (2) co-design a team-based intervention to address identified needs; and (3) evaluate the intervention’s impact on efficiency and organizational outcomes. By working collaboratively with police practitioners throughout the research process, this project aims to generate practical and sustainable solutions to enhance the effectiveness of online CSA investigations.

With a growing number of users, social media is revolutionising communication, knowledge sharing, and interaction globally. It is increasingly attracting research interest as a discourse arena, data repository, and communication platform. Grounded theory, a qualitative social science research method, is gaining popularity in social media studies. This scoping review aims to map the grounded theory research in the field of social media. We used Levac et al.’s extension of Arksey and O’Malley’s systematic five-stage methodological framework for scoping reviews to identify, analyse and synthesise the literature. Social Sciences Citations Index (Web of Science), ProQuest Central and EBSCOhost EJS database were searched to identify empirical research published between 2017 and 2024, from which we selected 30 publications. We found that grounded theory is used as a stand-alone method, in mixed-methods studies or its techniques are integrated into qualitative research. Grounded theory has been widely applied to various social media topics to explore users’ experiences and behaviours on these platforms. Social media researchers have used grounded theory to break new ground, identify processes, develop substantive theories, or for pragmatic reasons. The main limitation was the narrow focus of the exploratory method. Very few articles articulated their grounded theory method. Social media researchers considering using or adapting the grounded theory method, processes or techniques are encouraged to thoughtfully consider and clearly report the methodological underpinnings of their research. This will not only assist readers in assessing rigour and interpreting findings but also contribute to the evolution of the grounded theory method itself.

Older migrants often constitute a hard-to-reach demographic group for researchers, particularly those who are ethnolinguistic minorities with limited host country language competence. Acknowledging the heterogeneous profiles of older people and their particular life histories, in this article we discuss the methodological challenges in conducting qualitative research with older Chinese migrants. We report on our experience during data collection (recruitment, implementation, and termination) using various methods (questionnaires, interviews, and go-alongs) with 22 participants, as part of a broader project that focused on older migrants’ experience of daily-life language challenges and coping strategies in New Zealand. Successful recruitment relied heavily on trust-building that was facilitated by gatekeepers, given older migrants’ vulnerability to fraud. Pre-talks were used to deepen trust and negotiate practical age-related issues. During research implementation, we demonstrate the benefits of collaborative questionnaire completion, dialogical interviews, and of enabling participants to co-construct the go-along procedure. We emphasize the importance of practical and psychological acknowledgement of participants’ contribution and discuss forms of meeting participants’ expectations for ongoing contact without encouraging dependency. We observed limited evidence of post-research abandonment among participants. We close with recommendations for recruiting this demographic group aimed at future researchers.

Recruiting research participants is a vital part of health research, necessary to obtain data that can yield meaningful results. Recruiting research participants, however, can be challenging and time-consuming. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant challenges to participant recruitment, as traditional methods relying on in-person interactions were not feasible with health restrictions. This was particularly challenging for community-led research with Indigenous communities, where relational approaches to recruitment are culturally appropriate and ethically necessary to build community trust. This paper describes the recruitment methods of three different Indigenous community-led studies carried out in Southern Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic and emphasizes the necessity for flexibility and responsive recruitment strategies during this time. Despite health regulations disrupting in-person approaches to building relationships during the pandemic, our priority for a relational approach to recruitment was achieved through strong relationships with community partners and the use of technology. The examples and strategies provided here contribute to the developing body of literature describing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on qualitative and community-led research, of which little is available concerning recruitment strategies. Our experience and learning will be valuable to novice researchers and those who are new to community-led and relational approaches to research.

Qualitative research data, such as data from focus groups and in-depth interviews, are increasingly made publicly available and used by secondary researchers, which promotes open science and improves research transparency. This has prompted concerns about the sensitivity of these data, participant confidentiality, data ownership, and the time burden and cost of de-identifying data. As more qualitative researchers (QRs) share sensitive data, they will need support to share responsibly. Few repositories provide qualitative data sharing guidance, and currently, researchers must manually de-identify data prior to sharing. To address these needs, our QDS team worked to identify and reduce ethical and practical barriers to sharing qualitative research data in health sciences research. We developed specific QDS guidelines and tools for data de-identification, depositing, and sharing. Additionally, we developed and tested Qualitative Data Sharing (QuaDS) Software to support qualitative data de-identification. We assisted 28 qualitative health science researchers in preparing and de-identifying data for deposit in a repository. Here, we describe the process of recruiting, enrolling, and assisting QRs to use the guidelines and software and report on the revisions we made to our processes and software based on feedback from QRs and curators and observations made by project team members. Through our pilot project, we demonstrate that qualitative data sharing is feasible and can be done responsibly.

The aim of this Q-methodology study is to explore the impact of innovative pedagogical interventions, specifically the Reverse Jigsaw and Edpuzzle methods, on the learning outcomes of doctoral business students. The Reverse Jigsaw technique, an innovative collaborative learning strategy, emphasizes information sharing and knowledge integration among students. Edpuzzle, as an interactive video learning platform, engages students by allowing educators to embed questions into videos. These methods are known to significantly enhance learning experiences, particularly in the complex environment of higher education. Conducted over an 18-week Qualitative Research course at a business school, the participant pool will consist of 15 students. Focus group interviews will be conducted to extract insights from the participants, followed by the application of Q-sorting procedures to categorize subjective opinions. The findings from the Q-methodology analysis are expected to reveal a diverse spectrum of perspectives held by the doctoral business students. These insights will provide valuable guidance for educators, curriculum designers, and institutions to refine their teaching strategies in the doctoral business education context. This research contributes to the ongoing discourse in relation to pedagogical innovation, and endeavors to elevate the overall quality of education in this specialized field by shedding light on these nuanced viewpoints.

This paper highlights the methodological approaches used to examine the experiences of Black women preservice teachers (BWPSTs). Using Hauntological Excavation, this study higlights how the Black Feminist Listening Guide (BFLG) can be a useful methodological tool to amplify the voices of BWPSTs. By centering the lived experiences of Black women, the research aims to counter the dominant narratives in teacher education research that largely focus on the perspectives of white preservice teachers. This study prioritizes Black women as epistemological agents, challenging the tendency in teacher education to treat teachers of color as a homogenous group and often overlooking the specific impacts of anti-Black racism. The research underscores the limitations of traditional teacher education programs, which, while often emphasizing equity and justice, frequently fail to address the intersectional identities and developmental needs of Black women educators. By centering the voices of BWPSTs, this study calls for a shift in how teacher education views and supports Black women, advocating for an investment in their growth as educators. The findings highlight the importance of counterspaces like BWT, where BWPSTs can confront their own narratives, share transformative stories, and envision more inclusive futures for their students. These experiences are essential for the healing and authentic development of BWPSTs, preparing them to challenge the status quo and create change within U.S. educational systems. This study offers valuable insights into the role of race and gender in shaping the professional identities of Black women educators and calls for more inclusive and intersectional approaches to teacher education research.

Health science funding agencies incentivize qualitative community-based research to promote inclusion and better address the health of historically exploited or excluded communities. However, in this paper, we demonstrate that such incentivizing may result in an exercise where minimal inclusion requirements are sought to expedite the research process while proper methods for community inclusion in qualitative health research are limited. Researchers may choose to recruit from vulnerable populations and include community representatives in advisory capacities but exclude the same vulnerable populations from participating in less convenient parts of the research process such as data analysis and interpretation. We argue that this is unethical as it undervalues community participation and serves to reify oppressive power structures that community-based participatory research (CBPR) strives to move away from. In this paper, we draw from feminist ethics and science and technology studies (STS) of care to introduce attentiveness as an analytic that modifies the relationships between researchers and community partners within all steps of research in ways that foreground community expertise and lived experience to produce transformative biomedical research based in health justice. First, we highlight the ethical rationales for community inclusion in qualitative data analysis through meaningful inclusion and epistemic justice, and provide researchers within CBPR normative grounding to support their methodological practice. Second, we describe attentiveness and demonstrate how inclusion within CBPR can be modified to generate novel ways of working with community partners during qualitative data analysis. Attentiveness thus bears significant epistemic potential in reworking longstanding qualitative research practices in CBPR that emphasize health justice.

The term shadowing is ubiquitously used to describe a variety of research approaches, often without explanation of underlying epistemological assumptions. This paper critiques shadowing in educational research, highlighting qualitative shadowing as a novel method for gathering contextually relevant findings. The paper advances shadowing as a unique qualitative approach by exploring its particularities with reference to the literature and the researcher’s experiences of using the method to observe occupational therapists’ work in ten Australian primary schools. Insights related to accessing the field and ongoing ethical considerations, creating and maintaining the distinct researcher-participant relationship, and the emotional and logistical work involved in shadowing are considered. Findings may support future researchers to understand the advantages and challenges of using qualitative shadowing as a method. By granting researchers entry into the unseen and intimate realms of participants’ professional lives, qualitative shadowing offers a unique way of understanding perspectives, yielding rich data to provide a distinct form of knowledge.

Community-engaged research is an approach that helps foster partnerships between community members and researchers by incorporating community members across multiple stages of the research study. In doing so, researchers can gain a deeper understanding of the insider perspective. One area that has received limited attention is the process of engaging community members in qualitative data analysis. To overcome this limitation, we outline how we implemented and adapted the Rigorous and Accelerated Data Reduction (RADaR) technique to explore learners’ perceptions and experiences of a tailored research best practices training for community health workers and promotoras. We reflect on the strengths and challenges of using the RADaR technique in community-engaged research and provide a list of considerations for researchers engaging in a similar process. We also incorporate the community partner’s perspectives on engaging in qualitative data analysis. This article provides a step-by-step approach for engaging community partners in the qualitative data analysis process, particularly using the RADaR technique, as a strategy for enhancing research quality and mitigating the power imbalance between researchers and communities.

Disseminating images is a critical part of the photovoice process to move ideas to action. Viewers can help translate participants’ experiences to change. Yet, we know relatively little about the decisions made around photovoice dissemination or how photovoice images affect audiences. Relatedly, the audiences of photovoice remain understudied. To help close this gap, we describe a community-academic team’s process of moving photovoice results to change in the Reframing Life with HIV project, to chronicle the details of dissemination. This photovoice project was designed to give young, same gender loving men of color living with HIV (HIV + SGLMOC) in the urban Midwest a space to reframe the discussion around HIV medication adherence. Midway through the project, participants pivoted from planning to share their photo-stories with other HIV + SGLMOC via a photo exhibit – to creating a short video to decrease HIV stigma among emerging health professionals. We describe each step of the process and how the team made decisions about moving the project’s results to action and change. Steps included :1. Photovoice, 2. Post project interviews, 3. Video making, 4. Dissemination of stories via the video to teach others, 5. Project evaluation, and 6. Reflecting on lessons learned and next steps. The video that the participants made helped students understand HIV + SGLMOC, that they are human beings first, not illnesses or solely victims. Unfortunately, however, in post-video surveys, participants reported believing that people of certain races/ethnicities spread HIV, an unintended result of the project. Our findings suggest one way to approach photovoice dissemination, based in resilience and empowerment approaches, that is flexible, prioritizes participants’ project decisions, includes photovoice as one component of ongoing change, and underlines the importance of exploring and responding to viewer response to dissemination.

The application of realist-informed approaches to implementation research can produce answers to why, for whom and under what circumstances social determinants of health interventions work. In the context of a study to develop and test EHR-based clinical decision support tools that suggest adjusting care plans in response to patient-reported financial, housing, food, transportation, and utilities insecurity, the authors applied an innovative use of realist principles in a bounded, mid-study task. This paper demonstrates how realist retroduction can be applied in intervention development processes. Retroduction proved useful in identifying the often intangible clinical needs and preferences that affected decision support tool desirability and use, which then guided the revision of five tools prior to a formal trial. This paper illustrates how data from the study development phases were put in service of retroductive steps that, through the identification of tentative program theories, guided revision of the pilot electronic tools to better meet clinic needs in the study trial phase. Applying retroductive thinking to establish what may be more or less effective under real-world conditions before participants are recruited is a productive, pragmatic form of researcher/stakeholder co-design that seeks to achieve results without wasting clinical teams’ time.

Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) care is a fundamental right but sustained underinvestment and high demand for services means accessing SRH care can be challenging. Barriers to access are a cause of health inequalities among women. Globally, novel ways to increase equitable access are being explored. This includes the potential for community pharmacies to provide routine services. This qualitative evidence synthesis aims to explore women’s perceptions and experiences of accessing SRH services in high-income countries and the role that community pharmacies can play in improving equity in access to SRH care. Peer reviewed journal articles from MEDLINE, CINHAL and EMBASE databases will be searched using a designated search strategy. This will be an iterative process depending on the number of articles found. The lead reviewer (supported by a supervisory research team) will assess the eligibility of articles, and extract data using a bespoke form designed for this synthesis. The methodological quality of included studies will be assessed using the CASP tool. A thematic synthesis approach will be utilised to analyse the data. Assessment of confidence in the review findings will be evaluated using the GRADE Confidence in Evidence from Reviews of Qualitative research (GRADE-CERQual) tool. Ethical approval is not required.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing number of health researchers working with participatory visual methods (PVM) such as Photovoice and Digital Storytelling (DST) have shifted from in-person to online and hybrid settings. The purpose of this scoping review was to explore what the existing methodological literature tells us about these adaptations. Our review was oriented around two research questions: (1) What practices and adaptations have been implemented to create and deliver participatory visual methods projects, namely Photovoice and Digital Storytelling, in online and hybrid settings? (2) What are the ethical and equity considerations for promoting community member engagement in online PVM? We searched six international databases for peer-reviewed methodological articles published in all years, and a total of 32 articles met our inclusion criteria. Findings reveal that many adaptations were focused on methodological experimentation and extra planning and preparation. Ethical and equity considerations for promoting community member engagement focused on opportunities for flexible practice adaptations as well as recognizing potential tensions and tradeoffs. The review findings suggest that while there are reasons to be optimistic about the possibilities for increasing reach, accessibility and inclusivity in online PVM initiatives, ambiguities exist regarding participatory engagement, methodological adherence, and the sustainability and future of these methods in online settings. Future qualitative research should explore the experiences of PVM project teams along with further engagement with the post-pandemic literature as it emerges.

The aim of this research is to elicit and characterize students’ perspective of using VoiceThread in a peer-mentored English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) classroom. VoiceThread will be used both inside and outside the classroom to improve students’ engagement and educational experience. An online peer mentoring community will be established to foster the interaction among junior and sophomore students in a business class. Since this will entail making a quantitative analysis of subjective data, the novel Q-methodology will be used to interview 20 sophomore students and ask them to rank 40 statements (Q-set) related to their experience in the classroom. A factor analysis will be used to determine the number of factors, and individuals who are closely related within each category will be identified based on a correlation analysis. The data will be analyzed and evaluated using the PQMethod software in accordance with the best practice in Q-methodology and the results will show whether people who have similar ideas have similar operant characteristics. The significance of a Q-study is that it facilitates an in-depth examination of various perspectives, perceptual consensuses, and disagreements. The findings of this study can be used to generate additional hypothesis-testing experiments for future research and are also expected to have numerous theoretical and practical implications.

Exploring researcher’s positionality is prime in conducting research, especially in attempts to explore an experience of a phenomenon. This autoethnographic paper presents the positionality of an Arab Canadian immigrant researcher who has devoted her dissertation in social work to understand the acculturation process as a phenomenon experienced by Arab immigrant emerging adults in Canada, specifically in Windsor-Essex, southern Ontario. Herein forward, the article is written from the perspective of the researcher and is using first-person voice to best situate the journey of exploration through an autoethnographic account of acculturation as a lived experience. The researcher deconstructed her lived experience with the acculturation phenomenon, while commencing critical learning about Canada’s history of colonialism. This has altered her position from a resident to a settler in Canada. The article begins and ends with situating the self in the lens of immigration and refugee context, intersectional identity, as well as the experience, and how this exploration has landed the author in three milestones of her individual experience of the acculturation phenomenon. The article ends with contextualizing herself and sharing a current and future vision of exploring herself and transitioning from a resident to a settler.

Background: Indigenous Peoples face inequities in health and social determinants of health due to colonization. Pharmacists must create relationships with Indigenous Peoples because the patient care process depends on it and because relationality is essential to Indigenous Peoples. Pharmacists are well-positioned to provide care due to their accessibility and medication knowledge. Despite the need for a focus on decreasing health inequities, little research within pharmacy in Canada has focused on Indigenous perspectives. This research explores Alexander First Nation (AFN) members’ views of their relationships with community pharmacists in Alberta, Canada, regarding trust, expectations of pharmacists, and willingness to discuss traditional medicines. Methods: General principles of Indigenous research and Ethical Space informed the study design. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) was used, and the research was collaboratively designed with the Alexander Research Committee (ARC). Conversation methodology incorporates a long history of oral tradition with the Indigenous research principles of respect, relevance, and reciprocity. Inclusion criteria were AFN members living in Alexander or outside Alexander who had interacted with a pharmacist as an adult. Qualitative data were collected through one-on-one semi-structured interviews as conversations. Inductive thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Rigor was ensured by hiring an AFN research assistant, member checking, thematic saturation, an audit trail, and reflexivity. Discussion: An equitable partnership with the ARC was developed using CBPR, which supported Indigenous ways of knowing and doing to be incorporated into the research design and data interpretation. Consequently, the study results will provide information about building relationships with pharmacists that can be delivered back to AFN in a way that respects local First Nation perspectives and is meaningful to community members. Our results will also enable us to provide pharmacists with information about creating mutually beneficial relationships, from a First Nation perspective, necessary for positive Indigenous health outcomes.