The problem of appraising qualitative research

Abstract

Qualitative research can make a valuable contribution to the study of quality and safety in health care. Sound ways of appraising qualitative research are needed, but currently there are many different proposals with few signs of an emerging consensus. One problem has been the tendency to treat qualitative research as a unified field. We distinguish universal features of quality from those specific to methodology and offer a set of minimally prescriptive prompts to assist with the assessment of generic features of qualitative research. In using these, account will need to be taken of the particular method of data collection and methodological approach being used. There may be a need for appraisal criteria suited to the different methods of qualitative data collection and to different methodological approaches. These more specific criteria would help to distinguish fatal flaws from more minor errors in the design, conduct, and reporting of qualitative research. There will be difficulties in doing this because some aspects of qualitative research, particularly those relating to quality of insight and interpretation, will remain difficult to appraise and will rely largely on subjective judgement.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1136/qshc.2003.008714
Divisions: College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Psychology
College of Health & Life Sciences
College of Health & Life Sciences > Chronic and Communicable Conditions
College of Health & Life Sciences > Aston Pharmacy School
Additional Information: This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode.
Uncontrolled Keywords: qualitative research,quality and safety,health care
Publication ISSN: 1470-7934
Last Modified: 12 Mar 2024 17:23
Date Deposited: 19 Aug 2019 08:50
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://qualitys ... /3/223.abstract (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2004
Authors: Dixon-Woods, Mary
Shaw, Rachel L. (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-0438-7666)
Agarwal, Shona
Smith, Jonathan A.

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