Department of Psychology and Education, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, 08018 Barcelona, Spain.
Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre), University College London, London WC1H 0NR, UK.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 May 29;17(11):3853. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17113853.
Mixed methods research has been increasingly recognized as a useful approach for describing and explaining complex issues in palliative care and end-of-life research. However, little is known about the use of this methodology in the field and the ways in which mixed methods studies have been reported. The purpose of this methodological review was to examine the characteristics, methodological features and reporting quality of mixed methods articles published in palliative care research. The authors screened all articles published in eight journals specialized in palliative care between January 2014 and April 2019. Those that reported a mixed methods study (n = 159) were included. The Good Reporting of a Mixed Methods Study (GRAMMS) criteria were used to assess reporting quality. Findings showed that 57.9% of the identified studies used a convergent design and 82.4% mentioned complementarity as their main purpose for using a mixed methods approach. The reporting quality of the articles generally showed a need for improvement as authors usually did not describe the type of mixed methods design used and provided little detail on the integration of quantitative and qualitative methods. Based on the findings, recommendations are made to improve the quality of reporting of mixed methods articles in palliative care.
混合方法研究越来越被认为是描述和解释姑息治疗和生命末期研究中复杂问题的有用方法。然而，对于该方法在该领域的应用以及混合方法研究的报告方式，人们知之甚少。本方法学综述的目的是检查姑息治疗研究中发表的混合方法文章的特点、方法学特征和报告质量。作者筛选了 2014 年 1 月至 2019 年 4 月期间在 8 种专门从事姑息治疗的期刊上发表的所有文章。纳入了报告混合方法研究的文章（n=159）。使用混合方法研究的良好报告（GRAMMS）标准来评估报告质量。结果表明，57.9%的确定研究采用了收敛设计，82.4%的研究提到互补性是其采用混合方法的主要目的。文章的报告质量通常需要改进，因为作者通常没有描述使用的混合方法设计的类型，也没有详细说明定量和定性方法的整合。基于这些发现，提出了改进姑息治疗中混合方法文章报告质量的建议。
