Ensure there is a coherence and logic to all parts of the narrative being presented.Ensure integrity by checking resonance with participants, and reporting any subsequent changes in data interpretation.
participants, methods, data sets, researchers, and/or theories) Communicate clearly how a study has been informed by multiple perspectives (e.g.Articulate the significance by ensuring a research question is clearly stated and is aligned to a theoretical or empirical gap in the literature.Problematise the topic by engaging with the existing literature and asking critical questions about what is not known about the phenomenon, process, or concept being studied.is the process visible?)Ĭurrency – although not solely applicable to qualitative research, this relates to whether the research is appropriately situated in contemporary debate and discussion (i.e. Transparency - relates to whether the researchers have been open, explicit and clear about the methods and procedures, including changes to planned methods, and their own biases and preconceptions (i.e. is the research relevant to other situations and contexts?)Ĭonsistency – relates to whether the study methods and procedures have been documented in a way that they can be adequately scrutinised and replicated and there is coherence between different parts of the research (i.e. Relevancy – relates to whether others can easily determine if the findings can be applied to other settings (i.e. Plausibility - relates to how congruent the findings are with reality and how believable and trustworthy the research is (i.e. (see Table 1) Each quality criterion outlined in Table Table1 1 is further expanded in Table 2 in the form of several practical steps pertinent to the process of writing up qualitative research. Our advice is themed around long-established criteria for the quality of qualitative research developed by Lincoln and Guba. Rather, the suggestions we make are intended to help ECRs increase their likelihood of getting published and reviewers to make informed decisions about the quality of qualitative research being submitted for publication in BMC Medical Education. Our advice in this article is not intended to replace such “how to” guidance. These checklists can be valuable tools to confirm the essential elements of a qualitative study for early career researchers (ECRs). Fortunately, there are numerous guidelines for both authors and for reviewers of qualitative research, including practical “how to” checklists. This paper is aimed at maximising this investment by helping early career researchers (ECRs) and reviewers new to the qualitative research field become familiar with quality criteria in qualitative research and how these can be applied in the qualitative manuscript writing process. This represents a considerable investment in time and effort for both researchers and reviewers. As you will notice in this paper, qualitative research is underpinned by specific philosophical assumptions, quality criteria and has a lexicon or a language specific to it.Ī simple search of BMC Medical Education suggests that there are over 800 papers that employ qualitative methods either on their own or as part of a mixed methods study to evaluate various phenomena.
Qualitative research can yield unique data that can complement the numbers generated in quantitative research, by answering “how” and “why” research questions.
Such research can provide rich and diverse insights about social practices and individual experiences across the continuum of undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education, sectors and contexts. Qualitative research explores the ‘black box’ of how phenomena are constituted. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
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