Without any demographic or professional seniority data, how can readers determine whether your sample reflects the broader population of community health professionals in South-East Queensland? For instance, were your 17 participants predominantly early-career or late-career clinicians? This omission fundamentally undermines the transferability of your findings, a core goal of qualitative research. Please justify this decision more robustly, or explain why basic descriptive statistics could not have been collected anonymously.
Only 4 of the 17 participants (23.5%) validated their transcripts. The authors state that “the validated transcripts aligned with the interview data, suggesting that the non-validated transcripts likely reflected similar findings.” This is a logical leap – non-validated transcripts may contain unrecognized errors or misinterpretations that were never corrected. With such a low member checking completion rate, how can you confidently assert that the non-validated transcripts are accurate? Did you attempt follow-up with the remaining 13 participants? If not, this seriously weakens the credibility of your data verification process. Please provide the specific reasons given by participants for not returning their validated transcripts.
The authors interviewed 17 participants across five different professional groups (doctors, pharmacists, nurses, laboratory scientists/managers) and multiple practice settings (general practice, community pharmacy, aged care, RMMR, HMR, pathology). Data saturation is claimed using the Guest et al. method. However, with such a heterogeneous sample, achieving saturation within each subgroup is mathematically implausible (e.g., only 2 laboratory scientists, 4 nurses, 5 doctors, 6 pharmacists spread across distinct roles).
Please provide the saturation calculation details per subgroup. How can you claim thematic saturation for, say, laboratory scientists’ perspectives when you only interviewed two individuals from pathology services? Is it not more accurate to state that you reached saturation for broad, cross-cutting themes only, while subgroup-specific insights remain exploratory?