Critical Appraisal for Health Students

This guide aimed at health students, provides basic level support for appraising qualitative research papers. It's designed for students who have already attended lectures on critical appraisal. One framework for appraising qualitative research (based on 4 aspects of trustworthiness) is provided and there is an opportunity to practise the technique on a sample article.

Support Materials

To practise following this framework for critically appraising a qualitative article, please look at the following article:

Critical Appraisal of a qualitative paper: practical example

How to use this practical example

Using the framework, you can have a go at appraising a qualitative paper - we are going to look at the following article:

Schellekens, M.P.J. et al (2016) 'A qualitative study on mindfulness-based stress reduction for breast cancer patients: how women experience participating with fellow patients', Support Care Cancer, 24(4), pp. 1813-1820.

Step 1. Take a quick look at the article

Step 2. Click on the Credibility tab above - there are questions to help you appraise the trustworthiness of the article, read the questions and look for the answers in the article.

Step 3. Click on each question and our answers will appear.

Step 4. Repeat with the other aspects of Trustworthiness: Transferability, Dependability and Confirmability .

Questioning the credibility:

Who is the researcher? What has been their experience? How well do they know this research area?

Explanation of authors’ role on p.1814-15. 3 authors are unaccounted for in the article – what was their role? Potential bias as authors may be in favour of MBSR (having come from Centre for Mindfulness). Positive that they weren’t involved in running MBSR courses. 1 person doing the analysis not involved in the focus groups (positive) (MS) –know this from comparison of Focus groups/Data analysis sections. Authors know research area well.

Was the best method chosen? What method did they use? Was there any justification? Was the method scrutinised by peers? Is it a recognisable method? Was there triangulation ( more than one method used)?

There were 5 focus groups and 3 interviews (see Abstract and Methods). Interviews were conducted for palliative patient and two patients who participated in mixed cancer group. Used constant comparative method for data analysis – a recognised method but no justification as to why this was used (p.1815). No triangulation as each participant was only seen once either in a focus group or interview. The limitations of focus groups were acknowledged. Also mentioned that the results would be strengthened by using different methods. (p.1818-9)

How was the data collected? Was data collected from the participants at more than one time point? How long were the interviews? Were questions asked to the participants in different ways?

See p.1814-15. Each participant only attended one focus group so data was only collected at one time point. Focus groups 100-120 mins and took place 1 week after the course. Interviews 30-60 mins – either in person or by phone. Stated that focus groups encouraged open, non directive discussion. They mention one question used (bottom of p.1814) which suggests that questions were only asked once.

Is the research reporting what the participants actually said? Were the participants shown transcripts / notes of the interviews / observations to ‘check’ for accuracy? Are direct quotes used from a variety of participants?

Participants were shown a summary, not the full transcript (p.1815). Direct quotes were used but it wasn’t clear from which participants so it might not be a variety.