Background. Qualitative research explores complex phenomena encountered by clinicians, health care providers, policy makers and consumers. Although partial checklists are available, no consolidated reporting framework exists for any type of qualitative design. Objective. To develop a checklist for explicit and comprehensive reporting of qualitative studies (indepth interviews and focus groups). Methods. We performed a comprehensive search in Cochrane and Campbell Protocols, Medline, CINAHL, systematic reviews of qualitative studies, author or reviewer guidelines of major medical journals and reference lists of relevant publications for existing checklists used to assess qualitative studies. Seventy-six items from 22 checklists were compiled into a comprehensive list. All items were grouped into three domains: (i) research team and reflexivity, (ii) study design and (iii) data analysis and reporting. Duplicate items and those that were ambiguous, too broadly defined and impractical to assess were removed. Results. Items most frequently included in the checklists related to sampling method, setting for data collection, method of data collection, respondent validation of findings, method of recording data, description of the derivation of themes and inclusion of supporting quotations. We grouped all items into three domains: (i) research team and reflexivity, (ii) study design and (iii) data analysis and reporting. Conclusions. The criteria included in COREQ, a 32-item checklist, can help researchers to report important aspects of the research team, study methods, context of the study, findings, analysis and interpretations.

Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ): a 32-item checklist for interviews and focus groups

(2000). Determining Validity in Qualitative Inquiry. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 39, Getting Good Qualitative Data to Improve Eduational Practice, pp. 124-130.

Determining Validity in Qualitative Inquiry

The rejection of reliability and validity in qualitative inquiry in the 1980s has resulted in an interesting shift for "ensuring rigor" from the investigator’s actions during the course of the research, to the reader or consumer of qualitative inquiry. The emphasis on strategies that are implemented during the research process has been replaced by strategies for evaluating trustworthiness and utility that are implemented once a study is completed. In this article, we argue that reliability and validity remain appropriate concepts for attaining rigor in qualitative research. We argue that qualitative researchers should reclaim responsibility for reliability and validity by implementing verification strategies integral and self-correcting during the conduct of inquiry itself. This ensures the attainment of rigor using strategies inherent within each qualitative design, and moves the responsibility for incorporating and maintaining reliability and validity from external reviewers’ judgements to the investigators themselves. Finally, we make a plea for a return to terminology for ensuring rigor that is used by mainstream science.

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Verification Strategies for Establishing Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Research

This article presents a model for quality in qualitative research that is uniquely expansive, yet flexible, in that it makes distinc- tions among qualitative research's means (methods and practices) and its ends. The article first provides a contextualization and rationale for the conceptualization. Then the author presents and explores eight key markers of quality in qualitative research including (a) worthy topic, (b) rich rigor, (c) sincerity, (d) credibility, (e) resonance, (f) significant contribution, (g) ethics, and (h) meaningful coherence. This eight-point conceptualization offers a useful pedagogical model and provides a common language of qualitative best practices that can be recognized as integral by a variety of audiences. While making a case for these markers of quality, the article leaves space for dialogue, imagination, growth, and improvisation.

Qualitative Quality: Eight “Big-Tent” Criteria for Excellent Qualitative Research

The growth in qualitative research is a well-noted and welcomed fact within the social sciences; however, there is a regrettable lack of tools available for the analysis of qualitative material. There is a need for greater disclosure in qualitative analysis, and for more sophisticated tools to facilitate such analyses. This article details a technique for conducting thematic analysis of qualitative material, presenting a step-by-step guide of the analytic process, with the aid of an empirical example. The analytic method presented employs established, well-known techniques; the article proposes that thematic analyses can be usefully aided by and presented as thematic networks. Thematic networks are web-like illustrations that summarize the main themes constituting a piece of text. The thematic networks technique is a robust and highly sensitive tool for the systematization and presentation of qualitative analyses.

Thematic networks: an analytic tool for qualitative research

Criteria for assessing interpretive validity in qualitative research.

Wife battering has gained recognition throughout the Western world as a widespread social problem, yet little is known about what it feels like to be battered by someone you love. We talked with more than a hundred battered women in the United States, as well as the staffs in shelters where they seek support, to learn more about how women experience battering. We found that women who remain in violent relationships rationalize what is happening to them in six ways. Only when battered women reject these rationalizations and begin to view themselves as true victims of abuse does the victimization process actually begin. We discuss six catalysts that can bring about this redefinition and examine the physical and emotional toll that the experience of battering takes on a woman. On several occasions since 1850, feminists in Britain and the United States have initiated campaigns to end the battering of women by husbands and lovers, but have received little sympathy or support from the public (Dobash and Dobash, 1979). Sociologists systematically ignored the existence of violence against women until 1971, when journal articles and conferences devoted to the topic of domestic violence began to appear (Gelles, 1974; O'Brien, 1971; Steinmetz and Straus, 1974). Through the efforts of grass-roots activists and academics, battering has been recognized as a widespread social problem (Tierney, 1982). In 1975 a random survey of U.S. families found that 3.8 percent of women experienced severe violence in their marriage (Strauss et al., 1980). The National Crime Survey of 1976 found that one-fourth of all assaults against women who had ever been married were committed by their husbands or ex-husbands (Gacquin, 1978). Shelters provding services to battered women in the United States have not been able to keep pace with requests for assistance (Colorado Association for Aid to Battered Women, 1978; Ferraro, 1981a; Roberts, 1981; Women's Advocates, 1980). Although the existence of violence against women is now publicly acknowledged, the experience of being battered is poorly understood. Research aimed at discovering the incidence and related social variables has been based on an operational definition of battering which focuses on the violent act. The Conflict Tactic Scales (CTS) developed by Straus (1979), for example, is based on the techniques used to resolve family conflicts. The Violence Scale of the CTS ranks eight violent behaviors, ranging in severity from throwing something at the other person to using a knife or gun (Straus, 1979). The scale is not designed to explore the context of violent actions, or their meanings for the victim or perpetrator. With notable exceptions (Dobash and Dobash, 1979), the bulk of sociological research on battered women has focused on quantifiable variables (Gelles, 1974, 1976; O'Brien, 1971; Steinmetz, 1978; Straus, 1978). Interviews with battered women make it apparent that the experience of violence inflicted by a husband or lover is shocking and confusing. Battering is rarely perceived as an unambiguous assault demanding immediate action to ensure future safety. In fact, battered women often remain in violent relationships for years (Pagelow, 1981). Why do battered women stay in abusive relationships? Some observers answer facilely that

How Women Experience Battering: The Process of Victimization

This study examines drug acquisition and multiperson use of paraphernalia, drugs, and needles/syringes. Ethnographers observed 54 injection episodes in which IDUs were linked by HIV risk behaviors, and developed a typology of higher-risk, lower-risk, and nonsharing-risk networks. Multiperson use of injection paraphernalia or drug solution occurred in most injection events (94%). Serial use of syringes/needles occurred infrequently (14%) relative to "backloading" (37%) and reuse of paraphernalia (cookers 84%, cotton 77%, water 77%). Higher-risk injection networks were characterized by larger size and pooling of resources for drugs. Prevention messages must include avoiding reuse of injection paraphernalia and transfer of drug solution.

HIV Risk Behaviors Associated with the Injection Process: Multiperson Use of Drug Injection Equipment and Paraphernalia in Injection Drug User Networks

:Random Violence: How We Talk about New Crimes and New Victims

This work is both an amalgamation and extension of two early classic studies by the author, The Alcoholic Self and The Recovering Alcoholic. The new book provides a comprehensive study of how ordinary people live and experience alcoholism. And it does so in a larger context of the recovery process. Offering a unique theoretical foundation to understanding the lived experience of the active alcoholic, the author asserts that alcoholism is a disease in which negative emotions divide the self into warring, inner factions, fueled and distorted by alcoholic intoxication. The reader will find in The Alcoholic Society a clear, concise, picture of the inner life of alcoholism-a collective portrait drawn from the perspective of the active, drinking alcoholic. The work is solidly anchored in a long-term study of the socialization experiences that began in alcoholism treatment centers and continue in Alcoholics Anonymous recovery programs. The new volume details the transformation of self that accompanies the life cycle of illness and recovery. The book covers the treatment process, the restructuring of self, the alcoholic's interaction with his recovery treatment program and the modalities of self-transcendence that result from treatment. The Alcoholic Society will prove to be of inestimable value to professionals from all spheres, especially social psychologists who are working on the loss of self-efficacy, and practitioners and researchers in treatment centers who must confront realities of alcoholism on an everyday basis.

John M. Johnson

Papers

Criteria for assessing interpretive validity in qualitative research.

How Women Experience Battering: The Process of Victimization

HIV Risk Behaviors Associated with the Injection Process: Multiperson Use of Drug Injection Equipment and Paraphernalia in Injection Drug User Networks

:Random Violence: How We Talk about New Crimes and New Victims

The Alcoholic Society: Addiction and Recovery of the Self