How Will We Know "Good" Qualitative Research When We See It? Beginning the Dialogue in Health Services Research

Health Services Research, Dec, 1999 by Kelly J. Devers

Second, many practitioners of qualitative research and methods historically adopted the criteria rooted in the positivist paradigm to describe and evaluate their research despite seemingly incompatible philosophical perspectives. The aim of these qualitative researchers was to do "good positivist research with less rigorous methods and procedures" (Denzin and Lincoln 1994, citing Becker 1993: 5). [9] Therefore, they emphasized the validity of their methods (rather than their reliability), the unique kinds of questions they could answer (e.g., how, what does it mean?), and the various strategies they developed to minimize bias and subjectivity. They also reframed the issue of generalizability from a question of the extent to which the results could be extended to a population or to phenomena across time and place, to whether the concepts and theories generated were applicable in similar contexts (i.e., transferable). In fact, a goal and hallmark of qualitative methods is the identification and refining of cat egories or types of social phenomena and the specific contexts in which types of behavior occur. Despite these methodological responses and the value of these early qualitative findings in many disciplines, it is easy to see how qualitative research was often viewed by positivist criteria as inferior to quantitative research.

There are three ways we can interpret the historic use of positivist criteria by many qualitative researchers. The first is that the practice was a necessary, but undesirable, feature of the "discourse of justification." In short, the discussion of qualitative research in positivist terms reflected the dominance of quantitative research in certain social science disciplines and the need to respond to criticisms of qualitative research in those terms. For example, qualitative researchers in sociology were frequently challenged by quantitative sociologists to define their paradigmatic perspective and to defend their methods, whereas relatively less pressure existed in anthropology to do so, because the philosophy and method dominated the field. Another interpretation is that many practitioners of qualitative research agreed with the tenets of the positivist paradigm despite philosophical and theoretical perspectives that, at a minimum, seemed to require their modification. Although the methods and procedures u sed to study subjective feelings and meanings were different, they could still be rigorous and scientific. However, it is important to note that even prior to the mid-1970s some qualitative researchers were arguing for a unique set of standards separate from positivist criteria (e.g., see Cicourel 1964). The third and final interpretation is that the adoption by qualitative researchers of positivist criteria solved important practical problems. These solutions include a framework and language for articulating complex, and at times unconscious, thought processes and methodological procedures; a shared language for discussing research with colleagues using quantitative methods; and a way to reduce the obstacles to combining qualitative and quantitative methods. As with many situations, there is perhaps some "truth" in each of these interpretations.