Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: Focus group discussions are becoming an increasingly popular methodology in primary health care research. They can be used to understand peoples beliefs, opinions and attitudes and particularly how they can hold multiple understandings, can change views and develop their thinking in the process of interaction with other people about the topic of interest. With the increasing emphasis on critical appraisal of scientific research, it is obvious that reporting qualitative research has to be transparent. Not only methodology itself should be clearly understandable and appreciable, but also the question should be answered whether focus group methodology is the most appropriate to serve the research question.
Objectives: To elaborate a reliable and valid checklist for the critical appraisal of focus group research articles to inform referees and editors of medical journals, but most of all to help authors in reporting transparently.
Methods: A review of the literature in MedLine, Psyclit, Eric, Sociological Abstracts, Dissertation and the Cochrane Library from 1995 with the keywords qualitative research, focus groups, methodology and standards ; the elaboration of a critical appraisal checklist ; the internal validation of the checklist by two teams of independently appreciating referees ; the assessment of the inter-rater agreement by an international panel of the European General Practitioners Research Workshop.
Results: A critical appraisal checklist based upon a survey of the literature, an expert discussion group, a trial to appreciate the feasibility of the checklist and to evaluate the inter-rater agreement.
Relevance for the Cochrane Colloquium: Qualitative research articles, and in particular focus group research articles could become more transparent, and hence could be more frequently published, if peer reviewers have a checklist at their disposition and use it.
Objectives: To elaborate a reliable and valid checklist for the critical appraisal of focus group research articles to inform referees and editors of medical journals, but most of all to help authors in reporting transparently.
Methods: A review of the literature in MedLine, Psyclit, Eric, Sociological Abstracts, Dissertation and the Cochrane Library from 1995 with the keywords qualitative research, focus groups, methodology and standards ; the elaboration of a critical appraisal checklist ; the internal validation of the checklist by two teams of independently appreciating referees ; the assessment of the inter-rater agreement by an international panel of the European General Practitioners Research Workshop.
Results: A critical appraisal checklist based upon a survey of the literature, an expert discussion group, a trial to appreciate the feasibility of the checklist and to evaluate the inter-rater agreement.
Relevance for the Cochrane Colloquium: Qualitative research articles, and in particular focus group research articles could become more transparent, and hence could be more frequently published, if peer reviewers have a checklist at their disposition and use it.