Hoff T J, Witt L C
University at Albany, SUNY, USA.
Med Care Res Rev. 2000 Jun;57(2):139-60. doi: 10.1177/107755870005700201.
There is interest in promoting greater use of qualitative methods in health care research. However, little is known about the volume or characteristics of published studies that use qualitative methods. This article explores these issues through a systematic review of 3 years (1995-1997) of articles classified as research in nine core health services research and management journals. The findings show that only about one in seven published research articles used qualitative methods. Two of the nine journals reviewed contributed 45 percent of the total number of articles using qualitative methods. Four journals contributed a combined 2 percent of this total number. The primary purposes in using these methods are description and articulating stakeholder perspectives. There is no standard number of pages devoted by journals to these studies or evidence that they require more journal space on average than quantitative studies. Most of the studies reviewed presented little or no information on methodology. These findings clarify future areas of emphasis for both editors and researchers wishing to promote the use of qualitative methodology in published health care research.
人们对在医疗保健研究中推广更多地使用定性方法很感兴趣。然而，对于已发表的使用定性方法的研究的数量或特征却知之甚少。本文通过对九种核心医疗服务研究与管理期刊中1995年至1997年这三年被归类为研究的文章进行系统综述，探讨了这些问题。研究结果表明，在已发表的研究文章中，只有约七分之一使用了定性方法。所审查的九种期刊中有两种贡献了使用定性方法的文章总数的45%。四种期刊合计贡献了这一总数的2%。使用这些方法的主要目的是描述和阐明利益相关者的观点。期刊并没有为这些研究专门留出标准页数，也没有证据表明它们平均比定量研究需要更多的期刊篇幅。大多数被审查的研究几乎没有提供关于方法的信息。这些发现为希望在已发表的医疗保健研究中推广使用定性方法的编辑和研究人员明确了未来需要重点关注的领域。
