What Is Good Qualitative Research

Journal of Health Psychology http://hpq.sagepub.com/

What is Good Qualitative Research?: A First Step towards a Comprehensive Approach to Judging Rigour/Quality
Jane Meyrick J Health Psychol 2006 11: 799 DOI: 10.1177/1359105306066643 The online version of this article can be found at: http://hpq.sagepub.com/content/11/5/799

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This has often meant that even within qualitative research, the means of establishing quality have been representative of single epistemological standpoints. Examination of various criteria (Blaxter, 1996 for the Medical Sociological Group; Boulton & Fitzpatrick, 1996; Cobb & Hagemaster, 1987; Mays & Pope, 1995) can be seen as representative of the epistemological assumptions of their discipline but not that of others. For example, Seale and Silverman (1997) focus on the need to establish objectivity as a common guarantor of qualitative research in sociological studies but Sherrard (1997) highlights the exact opposite describing how the researcher influences their findings, a technique used in some areas of psychological research. At the same time, there is a desperate need for a comprehensive tool that can be widely applied by people unfamiliar with qualitative research as the basis for decisions about quality. The decision therefore was taken to present
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