Appraising qualitative health research--towards a differentiated approach

Introduction Qualitative health research provides important evidence for healthcare practice and is the most suitable approach for exploring healthcare perspectives and experiences. Appraisal of health research is an essential part of practising evidence-based healthcare (EBHC). This applies to all types of research, be it quantitative or qualitative. Within EBHC education there has arguably been more attention paid to developing differentiated critical appraisal tools for different methodologies. Numerous frameworks and tools to aid the appraisal of specific research designs have been developed and published, usually in the form of checklists in which ‘quality’ is summarised numerically or narratively.1 Perhaps unsurprisingly, the appraisal of qualitative health research has mirrored this useful but arguably reductive approach by adopting checklists or broad framework approaches. There is one key and important difference, however; appraisal tools for quantitative research have been developed to accommodate the different study designs within the quantitative domain....
Source: Evidence-Based Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: EBM learning Source Type: research