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Education And Debate

Checklists for improving rigour in qualitative research: a case of the tail wagging the dog?

BMJ 2001; 322 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.322.7294.1115 (Published 05 May 2001) Cite this as: BMJ 2001;322:1115

Rapid Response:

Longer Checklists or Reflexivity?

Editor – Barbour1 has been brave enough to place her head above the
parapet. Over the past few years researchers who use qualitative methods
have received greater esteem, obtained funding from sources previously out
of bounds, and published in journals that may have dismissed their efforts
a decade ago. As a result it has been in the interests of many
researchers to keep some of these views to themselves.

While I believe Barbour has done a service to the integrity of the
methodology of qualitative research she stops short of offering many
solutions. I sympathasize. Solutions to any of the problems highlighted
are themselves likely to be added to the checklists. For example, Barbour
appears to advocate the “constant-comparative” method of analysis but
should this simply be added to current lists?

The constant search for rigour simply results in longer and longer
checklists. One only has to compare the assessment and design guidelines
for clinical trials twenty years ago with those of today to see the point.
Will qualitative research go the same way? Perhaps it doesn’t matter.
Perhaps longer checklists simply reflect advances in knowledge of the
scientific method. My concern, however, is that while checklists are a
quick and easy way of facilitating the appraisal of a paper they simply
set up rules which researchers play to and get around, in rather the same
way that they find ways of getting round tax legislation.

Historically, qualitative researchers have addressed this issue, not
simply through technical fixes, but the more important process of
documenting reflection. In other words, researchers constantly reflect on
the research question, their role, attitudes, feelings, the impact of the
researcher on the people being studied, and so on.

While the personal reflections of the researcher may appear rather
out of place in many academic journals it would at least provide a way of
covering some of the known and unknown blind spots of checklists. This
applies to quantitative research as well as qualitative. In reading the
report of a clinical trial, do we really know everything that happened?
For example, patients were not told what drug they were receiving but were
they really “blind”? Rigour may lie in the unreported details,
peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of studies as much as in the overarching
issues contained in a checklist. The challenge is finding a way of making
it possible and acceptable to openly report these.

1. Barbour RS. Checklists for improving rigour in qualitative
research: a case of the tail wagging the dog? BMJ 2001;322:1115-1117.

Competing interests: No competing interests

04 May 2001
Brian Williams
Senior Lecturer in Behavioural Science
University of Dundee