Some help please. I have a quantitive background and much of my PhD has been going down this route.
I now feel I need to explore more widely/deeply but am not sure if I can use qualitative methods to try and find explanations for why two apparently similar groups of patients respond differently (are reassured or not reassured) after a single session with a clinician.

Hi Dafydd, would it be possible to describe your research design a little more? What have you aiming to do, and what have you achieved quantitatively so far?

I gather that, so far, a group of patients have been subjected to a consultation with a clinician and some of them have come away feeling reassured and some of them as not (sorry, if that sounds a bit dumb). Now you want to know the reasons why this is the case. Qualitative research would be potentially helpful here, allowing you explore and describe and gain insight for the reasons why using an inductive approach. In terms of the methodological implications, I'm thinking an explanatory mixed methods design.

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Walminskipeas,
Thanks for engaging.
The overview: in most populations with the painful condition I am looking at psychological factors measured at baseline are the only things that correlate with outcone. Yet in the self selecting group of interst to me this is not the case nothing appears to predict who will or will not do better with care.
In studies so far I have shown that all though this group have much lower scores in psychological tests than others about two thirds with above group mean (at baseline) scores have these reduced within a few days of their consultation. The third left with more adverse scores appear to be substantially less likely to report improvement a month later.
A second quantitive study is underway looking at many more subjects, with a control group and also looking at a range of possible confounding factors/factors that may be a barrier to a change in 'reassurance' - these asr factors that I have arrived at deductively after a year of literature searching.
I am concerned however that I may totally be missing the point and that there may be things not yet considered or complex interrelations that are not apparent. Hence the desire to use a more in-depth qualitative approach.
Also this is a self funded PhD so I have a very large amount of freedom regarding where I take it. The more I hear about qualitative approaches the more it chimes with my 24 years of experience seeing patients in primary care and I would like to learn more (am reading indicated texts and will be attending modules from a taught prof doctorate program shortly). Finally and very importantly to keep my interest focused it sounds fun!
I do understand a little of the principles and am getting there with the attitude but don't have any experience.

hey dafydd - walminski is like the kind of mixed methods research and advice :-)

But just to add my experience - I think I've done a study that sounds similar. I interviewed 2 groups of participants. I used the literature review to primarily guide my analysis of those interviews, but was also interested to see whether there was anything that was there that hadn't been included in the literature. I used template analysis, using the literature as my core themes, but then ditched them/adapted them and added to them as I read through the transcripts. I developed 2 templates (one for each group) - both using the same process.

Hi Sneaks,

That sounds very like the type of direction I could use.
Have you been able to comment upon comparisons between the groups? In my case this would be to identify possible reasons why some were not 'reassured'.

yep, so both groups have the same major themes, but the specific ways they manifest are different for each group, so I discuss the differences when I talk about each theme. I also present the themes in a big table with 1 group's themes on the left and one of the right to compare. Some people might do some kind of quantitative comparison (e.g. by counting occurrences in the text of each theme) but that wasn't the way I went with it - its purely qualitative.