I suggest you look at the wonderful literature review by Murphy et. al.,
produced fo r the Health Technology Assessment Programme. Go to their
website at www.hta.nhsweb.nhs.uk, and look for "Qualitative research methods
in health technology assessment: a review of the literature." on the
publications list. If you are in the NHS or an academic institution they
will send it to you free. it is huge (276 pages!) and is a complete tour de
force - they trace qualitative methods right back to the Ancient Greeks, go
into detail about all the epistemological and ontological questions
surrounding qualitative research, and devote a complete chapter to
qualitative methods in programme evaluation. The intended audience is NHS
commissioners of qualitative research - so it is very hot on what
constitutes "validity" in this context.
Kath Checkland
GP and MA student
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jacquie Fraser" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 14 March 2001 17:45
Subject: Evaluation of qualitative research
> I'm about to teach an evaluation course in public health. When I taught
the
> course before we looked exclusively at quantitative research and used
threats to
> internal validity as the main basis of determining 'success' of a program.
This
> time I would like to include evaluation of qualitative research but I'm
not sure
> just how to go about it or maybe even if I'm asking the right questions.
Is
> 'success' in qualitative research primarily about theory generation? Is
it
> about two or more researchers looking at the same transcripts and pulling
out
> the same themes? Am I really trying to get at apples and oranges here,
> quantitative evaluation measuring program success in terms (for public
health)
> of behaviour change, qualitative research looking at data-gathering to
enhance
> program design and/or implementation but not program outcomes?
>
> I may be just getting to a place of thinking about this that many of you
have
> been for awhile now so I would appreciate your thoughts on this or ways to
> decipher my, as yet, fuzzy thinking.
>
> Books that I've examined so far do not explicitly address evaluation of
> qualitative research (some have discussed using qualitative methods to
enhance
> quantitative methods of assessment) so any resources would also be
appreciated.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Jacquie Fraser, PhD
> Department of Health Science
> Armstrong Atlantic State University
> Savannah, Georgia USA
>
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