The Low Voices: Quality, Ethics, and Reach of Qualitative Data*

ABSTRACT

It may be stated that qualitative texts harbour a set of voices that, as if they were drawings, seek to sensitize and,ultimately­ transform those who listen to them. These voices come from participants in studies, from ourselves, researchers, and from others who have preceded us and who speak to us from the literature. Our research studies set off from participant's lived experience and, when interpreted, express the universal in the particular, as in the drawings by Goya who, by using images he took from the streets, expressed the pain and loneliness of people (Figure 1) and denounced events that occurred during the war, which over two-hundred years later still shudder and overwhelm us (Figure 2). Thus, similarly, carefully chosen and wisely combined in research reports, they, the low voices, will move those who read them into situations and experiences evoking potentially transformative images.