A mixed-methods study published in Frontiers in Conservation Science collected immediate post-excursion self-reports from 47 adults following commercial whale-watching trips in southwest Tenerife, with short-finned pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus) as the questionnaire’s focal species. The research, led by independent researcher Lavinia Mitchell, set out to examine what visitors find meaningful in these encounters and how different dimensions of the experience are reported together, a question that remains poorly understood despite whale watching’s growth as a global tourism activity.

The study was designed with the encounter at its centre. Five domains organised the evidence: participant background and prior context; encounter context and setting; emotional and relational responses; meaning and interpretation; and conservation-related self-reports. Participants completed a post-excursion questionnaire containing closed-response and open-text items, accessed through a QR code on their own devices between 7 and 17 March 2026. Quantitative data were summarised descriptively, with exploratory Spearman rank correlations, multiple-comparison correction and sensitivity analyses. Open-text responses were examined using hybrid deductive-inductive reflexive thematic analysis.

The emotional results were striking. Awe or wonder was reported by 44 of 47 participants, or 93.6 percent. Excitement followed at 91.5 percent, and curiosity at 89.1 percent. But empathy or concern was more variable, endorsed by only 59.6 percent of respondents. Participants commonly described pilot whales as social or family-oriented animals, with 34 of 46 respondents, or 73.9 percent, selecting that descriptor. Open-text accounts located meaning in perceived whale behaviour and sociality, free-ranging status, the ocean and sensory setting, and the human context of the excursion.

Support for whale protection and limits on tourism-related harm was high. Agreement reached 93.6 percent for stronger regulations to protect whales from disturbance, 93.6 percent for limits on whale-watching trips if the activity were harming whales, and 95.7 percent for a human duty to prevent tourism-related harm. Yet reports of thinking differently about whales were more mixed, with only 53.2 percent agreeing that the encounter made them think differently. Perceived influence on feelings about whale protection varied with several emotional and relational responses, but not clearly with perceived whale proximity.

That proximity finding is the study’s most provocative. When participants were asked which element most influenced their feelings about whale protection, seeing the whales up close was the most frequently selected influence, chosen by 22 of 46 respondents, or 47.8 percent. But neither reported physical proximity nor feeling close to the whales met the adjusted association criterion with perceived influence. In the exploratory correlation analysis, higher perceived-influence ratings tended to occur alongside higher ratings of empathy or concern, connection with nature, excitement, curiosity and awe or wonder, while calm, prior familiarity with pilot whales and both proximity measures did not show clear adjusted associations.

The open-text material helps explain the tension. Some participants emphasised the value of seeing free-ranging whales with space, at what they perceived to be a respectful distance and without disturbance. One participant wrote about seeing the whales with enough space to freely move around, as the boats were at a respectful distance. Another valued the fact that the animals were there of their own free will and not in captivity. For some participants, up close may therefore have reflected more than physical distance alone, potentially capturing the immediacy of being able to see or hear a free-ranging whale and attend to its movement and perceived behaviour.

The study is careful about what its findings do and do not show. The analyses identify exploratory patterns among concurrently collected responses, not evidence of attitudinal change, later behaviour or conservation outcomes. An emotion is not an attitude, a participant’s retrospective sense of influence is not measured change, and an intention is not behaviour. Stated intention is also an imperfect proxy for action, and the substantial intention-behaviour gap documented in psychological research means that what participants said they were more likely to support immediately after the excursion tells us little about whether they later acted on those intentions.

The limitations are equally clear. The sample was small and context-specific, recruited through non-probability convenience sampling, and a single post-excursion questionnaire cannot separate pre-existing values from responses associated with the encounter or show what persists over time. Several measures were researcher-developed single items, detailed information about specific excursions, vessel practices and whale responses was limited, and the qualitative material was brief. Responses may not have been fully independent because some participants may have been clustered within the same vessels, operators or individual excursions, and self-selection, the English-language questionnaire and socially desirable responding may also have influenced who participated and what was reported.

Yet the implications for management are significant. The findings do not support progressively closer approaches as a route to greater meaning or conservation relevance. Close observation was valued, but participants also valued free-ranging animals, space and perceived respectful distance. This matters because vessel presence and underwater noise have been associated with changes in cetacean behaviour and acoustic activity, and experimental approaches in the same area found that a louder vessel reduced the proportion of time mothers spent resting. The challenge, the study concludes, is not simply how close people can get to whales, but how meaningful encounters can occur while keeping the needs and welfare of the whales at their centre. Future work should combine visitor responses with independent measures of vessel practice and whale response, pairing what people find meaningful with what the animals actually experience.

Subject of Research: Whale-watching visitor experience and conservation responses in Tenerife

Article Title: Whale-watching encounters in Tenerife: an exploratory mixed-methods study of visitor experience, interpretation, and conservation-related responses

Article References: Mitchell, L. (2026). Whale-watching encounters in Tenerife: an exploratory mixed-methods study of visitor experience, interpretation, and conservation-related responses. Frontiers in Conservation Science, 7, Article 1932374. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcosc.2026.1932374

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fcosc.2026.1932374

Keywords: whale watching, pilot whales, Tenerife, conservation psychology, wildlife tourism, visitor experience, Whale-watching, encounters, exploratory, mixed-methods, visitor, experience

In a perspective article published in Transplant International, Chiara Becchetti of the University of Bern and Sofia C. Zambrano of the University of Bern’s Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine contend that the field has reached an inflection point. With graft and patient survival now so robust, they argue, attention must shift toward patient-reported outcomes, quality of life, psychological wellbeing, treatment burden, social reintegration, and the broader lived experience of transplant recipients. These dimensions, they emphasize, are often subjective and context-dependent, making them difficult to capture through quantitative methods alone.

The authors point to what they describe as a false narrative in kidney transplantation, where graft survival is frequently treated as the sole definition of success while critical dimensions of adaptation to life after transplant are overlooked. Patient-reported outcome measures, or PROMs, have emerged as valuable tools for quantifying quality of life and symptom burden beyond survival, with kidney transplantation currently at the forefront of such initiatives. However, the authors stress that these instruments originate from inherently subjective and experiential domains, and that rigorous qualitative research must precede their development to identify what patients themselves consider important.

Qualitative research, as the authors define it, is an interpretive approach to data collection and analysis concerned with the meanings people attach to their experiences of the social world. Rather than standardizing questions or responses, it treats the participant as the expert of their own experience, uncovering the meanings and constructions that shape health and illness. In this framework, subjectivity is not a bias to be eliminated but the essence of the data being studied.

The potential applications in transplant medicine are broad and still underexplored. Qualitative methods can illuminate patients’ lived experiences before and after transplantation, their expectations and fears, adherence behaviors, perceptions of immunosuppressive therapy, and the psychosocial impact of long-term follow-up. While quantitative studies can measure adherence rates to immunosuppressive medications, qualitative approaches can explore the underlying reasons, beliefs, and barriers that drive patient behavior, yielding insights far more relevant for clinicians aiming to improve adherence. Qualitative methods can also inform shared decision-making by revealing how patients and clinicians perceive risks, benefits, and trade-offs in complex decisions around transplant eligibility, listing, and post-transplant management.

Beyond clinical interactions, the authors highlight the profound existential and emotional dimensions of transplantation that qualitative research is uniquely positioned to capture. For recipients, this may include the complex reconstruction of identity or the navigation of emotions such as survivor’s guilt. The impact of transplantation extends beyond the patient to donor families and their experiences of grief associated with deceased donation, and even healthcare providers are not immune, as evidenced by studies documenting the emotional toll faced by transplantation coordinators.

Despite this potential, qualitative research remains significantly underutilized in transplant medicine. A PubMed search of leading solid organ transplantation journals combined with qualitative research keywords over the past five years revealed that less than 2 percent of published articles fall within this domain. The authors attribute this underrepresentation not solely to deliberate editorial choices but also to the limited availability of editors and reviewers with expertise in qualitative methodologies, leading to inconsistent evaluation standards and lower acceptance rates that in turn discourage qualitative researchers from submitting to these journals.

Several misconceptions contribute to this gap. A common criticism is that qualitative samples are too small, yet most qualitative studies do not seek statistical representativeness or determine sample size through statistical power. Instead, sampling is most often purposive and oriented toward generating sufficiently rich and relevant data to address the research question. Concepts such as saturation are appropriate within some traditions, such as grounded theory, but should not be imposed as universal criteria. Other approaches draw on information power, which considers whether participants and data provide sufficient relevant information rather than judging sample adequacy by participant numbers alone.

Empirical evidence supports this perception problem. In a qualitative study involving medical trainees and physicians, participants consistently rated quantitative projects as more scientific than qualitative ones and often perceived qualitative data as more biased and less objective. Notably, acceptance of qualitative research was strongly associated with prior exposure to its methods, while level of training had no impact. A recent study examining how medical faculty without qualitative research experience perceived its challenges found that despite recognizing its value, academics struggled to engage due to limited training, experience, and institutional support, with time constraints and lack of recognition further hindering adoption.

The authors also document how these systemic issues manifest during peer review. Clarke and colleagues recently highlighted qualitative researchers’ experiences of methodologically incongruent feedback, reporting that reviewers and editors often lack appropriate methodological expertise. When attempts to clarify these issues fail, researchers may feel compelled to compromise methodological rigor to achieve publication, an issue particularly pronounced among early-career academics within a publish-or-perish environment. Reporting guidelines such as the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research, or COREQ, checklist can support greater transparency, though the authors caution that these tools should be selected and interpreted in relation to the methodology employed rather than treated as universal quality checklists.

Rather than viewing qualitative and quantitative research as competing paradigms, the authors advocate for integration when appropriate to the research question. Mixed-methods approaches, which combine both types of data, are particularly promising in transplant medicine. Quantitative data can provide generalizable evidence on outcomes, while qualitative data can offer depth and contextual understanding, helping to interpret and apply findings in real-world settings. In clinical trial research, the authors note that qualitative components have traditionally been treated as subordinate add-ons or nested sub-studies, but researchers are increasingly encouraged to plan comprehensive studies in which the qualitative component is an equal partner that can optimize recruitment, refine informed consent, and explain unexpected outcomes.

To fully realize this potential, the authors call for several concrete steps. Training programs should incorporate qualitative methods into clinical research curricula, equipping clinicians with the skills needed to design and interpret such studies. Interdisciplinary collaboration with social scientists and qualitative methodologists should be encouraged. Journals should strive to include editors and reviewers with expertise in qualitative research and develop clearer guidelines for its evaluation. As transplantation outcomes continue to improve, the authors conclude, redefining success beyond survival to include patient experience and quality of life highlights the critical role of qualitative research in advancing truly patient-centered care.

Subject of Research: Transplant Medicine

Article Title: From graft survival to lived experience: a new research agenda in transplant medicine

Article References: Becchetti, C., & Zambrano, S. C. (2026). From graft survival to lived experience: a new research agenda in transplant medicine. Transplant International, 39, Article 17264. https://doi.org/10.3389/ti.2026.17264

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/ti.2026.17264

Keywords: graft, survival, lived, experience, research, agenda, transplant, medicine, scientific research