Qualitative research in health care - Assessing quality in qualitative research
Qualitative research in health care - Assessing quality in qualitative research
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DOI：
10.1136/bmj.320.7226.50
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发表时间：
2000-01-01
影响因子：
105.7
通讯作者：
Pope, C
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Mays, N;Pope, C
在过去的十年中，定性方法在卫生服务研究和卫生技术评估等领域变得越来越普遍，医学和相关期刊上对定性研究的报道也相应增加。1对这些方法的兴趣及其在健康研究中的广泛应用，导致了对定性研究的必要审查。来自其他传统的研究人员越来越关注了解定性方法，最重要的是，检查研究人员对从这些方法中获得的结果所做的声明。在定性研究中，对评估质量的关注最近表现在做和判断定性工作的指导方针的扩散上。2-5研究的使用者和资助者在制定这些准则方面发挥了重要作用，因为他们越来越熟悉定性方法，但需要一些手段来评估其质量并区分“好”和“差”质量研究。然而，定性研究中的“质量”问题是一个更大的和有争议的辩论的一部分，关于定性研究产生的知识的性质，其质量是否可以合理地判断，如果可以，如何判断。这篇论文不能完全公正地对待这场更广泛的认识论辩论。相反，它概述了如何定性方法可能被判断的两种观点，并认为定性研究可以根据两个广泛的标准进行评估：有效性和相关性。
In the past decade, qualitative methods have become more commonplace in areas such as health services research and health technology assessment, and there has been a corresponding rise in the reporting of qualitative research studies in medical and related journals. 1 Interest in these methods and their wider exposure in health research has led to necessary scrutiny of qualitative research. Researchers from other traditions are increasingly concerned to understand qualitative methods and, most importantly, to examine the claims researchers make about the findings obtained from these methods.The status of all forms of research depends on the quality of the methods used. In qualitative research, concern about assessing quality has manifested itself recently in the proliferation of guidelines for doing and judging qualitative work. 2–5 Users and funders of research have had an important role in developing these guidelines as they become increasingly familiar with qualitative methods, but require some means of assessing their quality and of distinguishing “good” and “poor” quality research. However, the issue of “quality” in qualitative research is part of a much larger and contested debate about the nature of the knowledge produced by qualitative research, whether its quality can legitimately be judged, and, if so, how. This paper cannot do full justice to this wider epistemological debate. Rather it outlines two views of how qualitative methods might be judged and argues that qualitative research can be assessed according to two broad criteria: validity and relevance.