Peer Learning Has Double Effects in Clinical Research Education: A Qualitative Study

Table 1

Extracted topics and text examples in familiarization step.

Extracted topic	Text example (in italics)
(1) “remarks” and “advice” that “leave” an “impression”	Are there any other presentations, remarks, questions, or advice that left a lasting impression on you?†
(2) “showing” a “direction”	I think they have been teaching me, or rather, showing me in the right direction.
(3) “teaching” and “stimulating” people to “notice,” “see,” and “know” the “problems” or “process” leading to the “final” “goal”	There are a lot of problems that I do completely not notice, even in front of me. They may not teach me directly, but they may stimulate me to notice. They are asking what kind of process is easier to reach the final goal.
(4) “telling” and “saying” to “think” about “options” of “designs” for “clinical questions” in the “paper”	They tell us that maybe design is the most difficult part of the research process, from clinical questions to PECO, thinking about what kind of design should be used. They say there are many options, and what you see depends on them, and the impact of the paper is different.
(5) “ringing” a “bell” about “getting” “data” and “results” being “out”	If you proceed with the research using that design, and if it works, you can get these results out and write one paper with these results, do you think that’s great? They are more likely to ring a bell if the question is like that.
(6) Other words that could not be connected as clumps: “entirely,” “seminar,” “first,” “pediatrics,” “feel,” “clinical research,” “really,” “place,” “submit,” and “protocol,” “around”	Entirely, I did not have a clear idea of what I was aiming for when I first heard about the seminar.; This seminar, at first, was much in the mode of stimulating beginners to become aware, and there were situations when they waited for someone to start talking.; Some said that if they were pediatrics researchers, they might understand, but if they were from totally unrelated departments, they might not feel much significance.; I’ve never done clinical research before, so it was very good to see a precedent of how this kind of process works. I had no idea, I really did not know anything.; In fact, when I stand in that place, perhaps I will remember.; My goal is to submit for a grant in the fall. I thought that it would be too late to complete the protocol around the end of all sessions.

We extracted five topics in the cooccurrence network diagram (Figure 1) made by the KH coder. We compared the network diagram with the raw texts in this familiarization step. We also reviewed and carefully read the words that were difficult to capture as clumps in the network diagram in the context of the raw texts. The extracted topics are listed on the left and text examples (in italics) on the right. †This text example was an interviewer’s question. In this familiarization step, we included not only the participants’ answers but also the interviewer’s questions in the analysis to fully understand the context.