Department of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB 7440, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA.
Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
AIDS Behav. 2021 Nov;25(Suppl 2):203-213. doi: 10.1007/s10461-021-03240-w. Epub 2021 Mar 27.
Longitudinal qualitative research can provide rich understanding of the life circumstances of vulnerable groups who experience health inequities, of whether, how and why these circumstances change, and of how these circumstances and processes of change impact health. But, this rich understanding is not automatic and requires systematic and thoughtful approaches to data collection and analysis. The purpose of this paper is to describe two longitudinal qualitative studies embedded in mixed-methods studies of social determinants of HIV in the United States and the Dominican Republic. We compare these two studies to critically reflect on specific techniques that facilitate longitudinal and iterative data collection, management, and analysis, in particular the use of participant-specific matrices and analytic summaries across the distinct phases of the research. We conclude that combining cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis that engages with both themes and processes of change can contribute to improved contextualization and understanding of social determinants of HIV.
纵向定性研究可以深入了解健康不平等弱势群体的生活状况，了解这些情况是否、如何以及为何发生变化，以及这些情况和变化过程如何影响健康。但是，这种深入的理解并非自动产生的，需要系统和深思熟虑的方法来进行数据收集和分析。本文的目的是描述两项纵向定性研究，这些研究嵌入在美国和多米尼加共和国进行的关于艾滋病毒社会决定因素的混合方法研究中。我们将这两项研究进行比较，以批判性地反思有助于纵向和迭代数据收集、管理和分析的具体技术，特别是在研究的不同阶段使用针对参与者的矩阵和分析摘要。我们的结论是，结合涉及主题和变化过程的横断面和纵向分析，可以有助于更好地了解艾滋病毒的社会决定因素及其背景。
