TY - JOUR
T1 - A comparative method for themes saturation (CoMeTS) in qualitative interviews
AU - Constantinou, Costas S.
AU - Georgiou, Maria
AU - Perdikogianni, Maria
PY - 2017/10/1
Y1 - 2017/10/1
N2 - Saturation of data has been acknowledged by many social scientists as evidence of rigor in qualitative research. Though there is a consensus about its definition and usefulness in qualitative research, the methods for achieving saturation are scarce while the social scientists who mention data saturation in their research methodologies do not adequately describe how this is achieved. This paper describes a new method for achieving saturation in studies that use interviews. The method is called Comparative Method for Themes Saturation (CoMeTS). CoMeTS is comparative in two ways. First, all themes from all interviews are compared with each other. Second, the sequence of interviews is reordered multiple times in order to check saturation again. This is because the sequence of interviews during the check makes saturation vary and, therefore, reordering helps confirming saturation. This paper concludes that CoMeTS is a simple, comparative and holistic method for achieving saturation and that it can be used in complicated qualitative studies.
AB - Saturation of data has been acknowledged by many social scientists as evidence of rigor in qualitative research. Though there is a consensus about its definition and usefulness in qualitative research, the methods for achieving saturation are scarce while the social scientists who mention data saturation in their research methodologies do not adequately describe how this is achieved. This paper describes a new method for achieving saturation in studies that use interviews. The method is called Comparative Method for Themes Saturation (CoMeTS). CoMeTS is comparative in two ways. First, all themes from all interviews are compared with each other. Second, the sequence of interviews is reordered multiple times in order to check saturation again. This is because the sequence of interviews during the check makes saturation vary and, therefore, reordering helps confirming saturation. This paper concludes that CoMeTS is a simple, comparative and holistic method for achieving saturation and that it can be used in complicated qualitative studies.
KW - CoMeTS
KW - qualitative interviews
KW - saturated terrain
KW - saturation threshold
KW - themes saturation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85031413370&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1468794116686650
DO - 10.1177/1468794116686650
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85031413370
SN - 1468-7941
VL - 17
SP - 571
EP - 588
JO - Qualitative Research
JF - Qualitative Research
IS - 5
ER -