|

Search

HM Treasury website

Feedback

• Request email updates
• Website feedback
• Share your news

Quality in Qualitative Evaluation: A framework for assessing research evidence

---

Despite the extensive use of qualitative methods, there are no explicitly agreed standards regarding what constitutes quality in qualitative research.  This study was commissioned to improve the quality of qualitative evaluations and to develop a framework for assessing research evidence.  It was carried out by the National Centre for Social Research in 2003. 

Two reports are available from this work, a full report which presents the full methodological review of quality standards in evaluation methods and a slimmer presentation of the framework, the premises underpinning it and its intended uses.  The framework provides a useful and useable guide for assessing the credibility, rigour and relevance of individual research studies.

The framework built on a number of elements:

• a comprehensive and systematic review of the research literature relating to standards in qualitative research
• a review of the qualitative research methods used in Government-funded evaluation studies
• a review of existing frameworks for reviewing quality in qualitative research
• twenty-nine in-depth interviews with Government-based commissioners and managers of research, Government-based policy-makers, other funders of evaluation research (research councils and foundations), academics and practitioners involved in conducting qualitative research and writing about quality
• a workshop involving the above groups to refine the framework initially developed
• the trial application of the framework to a small number of studies to help to develop and refine it.

The framework contains eighteen appraisal questions based around four guiding principles.  The guiding principles are that research should be:

1. contributory in advancing wider knowledge or understanding
2. defensible in design by providing a research strategy which can address the evaluation questions posed
3. rigorous in conduct through the systematic and transparent collection, analysis and interpretation of qualitative data
4. credible in claim through offering well-founded and plausible arguments about the significance of the data generated.

The framework is primarily of use to researchers interested in appraising the quality of qualitative evaluations, particularly those concerned with the development and implementation of social policy, programmes and practice.

• Quality in Qualitative evaluation: full report including methodological review (PDF, 748KB)
• Quality in Qualitative evaluation: full report including methodological review (browseable version)
• Quality In Qualitative Evaluation: the Framework (PDF, 171KB)
• Quality In Qualitative Evaluation: the Framework (browseable version)

For more information on the review contact: Government Social Research Unit