Qualitative research in medicine and health care
Journal of General Internal MedicinePublished 1 January 1998Open access
Poy M. Poses, Alice M. Isen
Citations72
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score1.99
SNIP1.71
Generate an AI Snapshot to get a quick, structured summary of this paper.
Study Snapshot
ObjectiveStudy objective
MethodsResearch methodology
PopulationPopulation studied
Sample sizeSample sizes
OutcomesStudy outcomes here
ResultsStudy results comes here
LimitationsResearch study limitations comes here
A concise AI-generated summary of the paper will appear here once you click Generate AI Snapshot.
TL;DR
This article tries to raise and discuss questions about how qualitative research can address either “clinical” or “biopsychosocial” questions, and helps physicians and clinical and health services researchers to understand some of the limitations and potential contributions of qualitative research better.
Keywords
Health ProfessionsEconomics, Econometrics and Finance
BiometricsLongitudinal Data Analysis for Discrete and Continuous Outcomes
7,834 Citations1986Scott L. Zeger, Kung‐Yee Liang
A class of generalized estimating equations (GEEs) for the regression parameters is proposed, extensions of those used in quasi-likelihood methods which have solutions which are consistent and asymptotically Gaussian even when the time dependence is misspecified as the authors often expect.
BMJQualitative Research: Consensus methods for medical and health services research
3,522 Citations1995Jeremy Jones, Duncan Hunter
Two consensus methods commonly adopted in medical, nursing, and health services research--the Delphi process and the nominal group technique (also known as the expert panel)--are described, together with the most appropriate situations for using them.
American Journal of NephrologyDialysis Dose and Intradialytic Hypotension: Results from the HEMO Study
2,699 Citations2013Finnian R. Mc Causland, Steven M. Brunelli +1 more
BMJQualitative Research: Rigour and qualitative research
2,673 Citations1995Nicholas Mays, Catherine Pope
BMJQualitative Research: Reaching the parts other methods cannot reach: an introduction to qualitative methods in health and health services research
2,351 Citations1995Catherine Pope, Nick Mays
The rapid expansion of research on and about health and health services, and the relatively recent demarcation of a distinct field of "health services research" depend heavily on doctors and other health professionals being investigators, participants, and peer reviewers.
BMJQualitative Research: Qualitative interviews in medical research
1,628 Citations1995Nicky Britten
This paper provides an outline of qualitative interview techniques and their application in medical settings and explains the rationale for these techniques and shows how they can be used to research kinds of questions that are different from those dealt with by quantitative methods.
Advances in experimental social psychologyPositive Affect, Cognitive Processes, and Social Behavior
1,454 Citations1987Alice M. Isen
Psychological BulletinA stitch in time: Self-regulation and proactive coping.
1,388 Citations1997Lisa G. Aspinwall, Shelley E. Taylor
The authors highlight the unique predictions afforded by a focus on proactive coping and the importance of understanding how people avoid and offset potential stressors.
Controlled Clinical TrialsClinical epidemiology: The essentials
922 Citations1988Pinuccia Valagussa
The fifth edition includes more complete coverage of systematic reviews and knowledge management, as well as other key topics such as abnormality, diagnosis, frequency and risk, prognosis, treatment, prevention, chance, studying cases and cause.
British Journal of PsychologyQualitative research and psychological theorizing
819 Citations1992Karen Henwood, Nick Pidgeon
'Grounded theory' is one useful approach to the systematic generation of theory from qualitative data, and alternative criteria can be advanced for judging the adequacy of research where qualitative methods have been used.
Annals of Internal MedicineUnderstanding and Improving Patient Compliance
794 Citations1984Stephen A. Eraker, JOHN P. KIRSCHT +1 more
The problem of patient compliance, as well as the ability of the physician to understand, detect, and improve compliance are described in relation to a new model of health decisions and patient behavior.
BMJQualitative Research: Observational methods in health care settings
482 Citations1995Nicholas Mays, Catherine Pope
In health care settings the qualitative researcher systematically watches people and events to find out about behaviours and interactions in natural settings, but this method has been insightful and illuminating, but it is not without pitfalls for the unprepared researcher.
JAMAUsers' Guides to the Medical Literature
466 Citations1993Andrew D Oxman
A primary care physician inspired by a recent editorial in JAMA about lifelong learning decides to use some of the time he normally takes for continuing medical education conferences for "practice-based education" tailored to his own practice.
JAMAIs This Patient Taking the Treatment as Prescribed?
373 Citations1993Barbara Stephenson
Physicians should measure compliance for patients prescribed a self-administered treatment because noncompliance is common and physicians can help patients to improve their compliance and increase the benefit they derive from therapy.
Social Science & MedicineDoctors' decisions and the cost of medical care
334 Citations1987Jeffrey H. Samet
Family PracticeQualitative research methods in general practice and primary care
271 Citations1995Nicky Britten, Roger Jones +2 more
Annals of Internal MedicineDecisions about Resuscitation: Inequities among Patients with Different Diseases but Similar Prognoses
244 Citations1989Robert M. Wachter, John M. Luce +2 more
Despite relatively similar prognoses, patients with AIDS or lung cancer are much more likely to receive DNR orders than patients with cirrhosis or severe congestive heart failure, and the findings should encourage physicians to determine the preferences of patients about life-sustaining treatments more equitably.
BMJWhy do qualitative research?
216 Citations1995Rachel Jones
In this week's journal Catherine Pope and Nick Mays introduce a series of articles on qualitative research that will describe the characteristics, scope, and applications of qualitative methodologies and, while distinguishing between qualitative and quantitative techniques, will emphasise that the two approaches should be regarded as complementary rather than competitive.
Annals of Internal MedicinePrevalence and Sources of Patients' Unmet Expectations for Care
210 Citations1996Richard L. Kravitz, Edward J. Callahan +4 more
Patients' expectations for medical care are of increasing interest to clinicians, policymakers, and researchers and further understanding of patients' expectations could improve the clinical process of care, health care delivery systems, and health services research.
BMJWhy general practitioners and consultants change their clinical practice: a critical incident study
194 Citations1997Lynne Allery, Penny A Owen +1 more
Education provided one sixth of the reasons for change, and was involved in one third of the changes The average number of reasons per change was three The wide range of factors involved in changing practice need to be considered in the provision and evaluation of education.
Annals of Internal MedicineHealth Values of the Seriously Ill
168 Citations1995Joel Tsevat, E. Francis Cook +8 more
The Study to Understand Prognoses and Preferences for Outcomes and Risks of Treatments was a prospective 5-center study of the prognoses, preferences, and decision making of seriously ill hospitalized adults, their surrogates, and their physicians.
Family PracticeDecision Making and Prescribing Patterns—a Literature Review
137 Citations1991Colin Bradley
It is argued that further understanding of prescribing behaviour requires a study of the underlying decision making processes and the evidence for the 'drug choice model' is assessed.
PubMedQualitative analysis: how to begin making sense.
136 Citations1994William L. Miller, Benjamin F. Crabtree
Qualitative analysis is overviews and introduces a language and means by which family physicians can begin to make sense of qualitative data, and three core steps of qualitative analysis are identified and compared to the diagnostic process.
Family PracticeThe desk-top computer as a magic box: patterns of behaviour connected with the desk-top computer; GPs' and patients' perceptions
120 Citations1997Anne Birgitte Als
It is concluded that patients need more information about the use of computers by GPs, and that GPs may benefit from paying more attention to their computer use.
Preventive MedicineRecognition and Liking of Tobacco and Alcohol Advertisements Among Adolescents: Relationships with Susceptibility to Substance Use
118 Citations1995Jennifer B. Unger, C. Anderson Johnson +1 more
The results suggest that tobacco advertisements ostensibly targeted to adult smokers may have the effect of recruiting new adolescent smokers.
PubMedReading and evaluating qualitative research studies.
104 Citations1995Nancy Elder, Miller Wl
This article is designed to help busy family physicians decide which qualitative studies are worth reading and to provide them with the tools to appreciate and evaluate research design and analysis.
The Canadian Journal of PsychiatryReconcilable Differences: The Marriage of Qualitative and Quantitative Methods
98 Citations1996Paula Goering, David L. Streiner
This article introduces methods and criteria and illustrates how qualitative and quantitative methods can be combined in order to improve what is learned from each.
Medical Decision MakingUsing a Trade-off Technique to Assess Patients' Treatment Preferences for Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia
83 Citations1996Hilary A. Llewellyn‐Thomas, Jenna Williams +2 more
In this preliminary study, the probability-tradeoff technique was feasible, able to identify unique preference-order subgroups, and able to generate apparently mean ingful preference scores in a clinical situation involving three alternative treatments.
British Journal of AddictionPredisposing effects of cigarette advertising on children's intentions to smoke when older
83 Citations1991P. P. Aitken, Douglas Eadie +2 more
Findings support the view that cigarette advertising has predisposing as well as reinforcing effects on children's attitudes and behaviour with respect to smoking.
Journal of Chronic DiseasesThe results of logistic analyses when the variables are highly correlated: An empirical example using diet and CHD incidence
79 Citations1984Daniel McGee, Dwayne Reed +1 more
This work provides an example which includes highly correlated variables in multivariate logistic analyses relating four nutrients to the incidence of coronary heart disease in 10 years for over 7000 men.
Journal of General Internal MedicineThe experience of violent injury for young African-American men
67 Citations1996John A. Rich, David A. Stone
An important perception among these young male victims of violence that if they fail to respond violently to injury or the threat of injury, they will be at risk of further victimization is revealed.
Medical Decision MakingRisk Preference and Laboratory Use
61 Citations1987Stephen D. Nightingale
The cognitive processes that determine risk preference in the face of loss appear to have a substantial influence on physician test-ordering behavior and none between an individual's risk preferences in the faces of gain and in theFace of loss is found.
Annals of Internal MedicineThe Virtue of Qualitative and Quantitative Research
60 Citations1996Thomas S. Inu
It is argued that Newton's era and the Renaissance established two permanently important world views, from which the traditions and methods of inquiry have proceeded, and it is appropriate to highlight the complementary natures of biomedical research and qualitative research.
Social Science & MedicineMulti-dimensional interaction analysis: A collaborative approach to the study of medical discourse
57 Citations1994Rita Charon, Michele G. Greene +1 more
The Multi-Dimensional Interaction Analysis (MDIA) system is described, a linguistic analytic instrument that combines features of process analysis and microanalysis to capture content, process, and context of medical conversations.
British Journal of AddictionCigarette advertising and adolescent experimentation with smoking
55 Citations1991Michael Klitzner, Paul J. Gruenewald +1 more
It was demonstrated that adolescents who experimented withcigarettes were better able to recognize advertised products than those who had not, a selective exposure effect, and subjects who were better at recognizing advertised brands were more likely to have experimented with cigarettes, an effect due to their exposure to cigarette advertising.
BMJCigarette advertising and onset of smoking in children: questionnaire survey
50 Citations1996David While, Sheila Kelly +2 more
Cigarette advertising appears to increase children's awareness of smoking at a generic level and encourages them to take up the behaviour, beginning with any cigarettes which are available and affordable.
Family PracticeQualitative Research and Family Practice: A Marriage made in Heaven?
43 Citations1992Elizabeth Murphy, Bengt Mattson
This paper shows how the underlying concerns of family practice medicine parallel those of the qualitative research tradition, and relates this emerging debate within family practice to that which has taken place in other disciplines, particularly that of education.
PubMedWhat we want: qualitative research. Promising frontier for family medicine.
42 Citations1996Adam J. Reid
Qualitative methodology was legitimized as a powerful tool to answer questions in primary care that have eluded the quantitative approach up to now.
British Journal of AddictionAdvertising, price, income and publicity effects on weekly cigarette sales in New Zealand supermarkets
41 Citations1991Murray Laugesen, Chris Meads
Real cigarette price, newspaper advertising of old, regular and upmarket brands, and the number of newspaper news items on smoking issues were inversely associated with cigarette sales, which explained 93% of changes in weekly cigarette sales.
Medical Decision MakingHeterogeneity in the Relationship between the Standard-gamble Utility Measure and Health-status Dimensions
23 Citations1996Jan Roelf Bult, Johanna L. Bosch +1 more
The results suggest that patients with symptomatic peripheral arterial disease belong to a variety of classes, all with class-specific relationships between the standard-gamble utility and the RAND-36 health-status dimensions.
PubMedDesirable features of qualitative research.
22 Citations1994Anton J. Kuzel, John D. Engel +2 more
These include values of empathy, collaboration, service, and moral sensitivity; characteristics of clarity and coherence; techniques of participatory dialogue, triangulation, purposeful sampling, and immersion in context; and outcomes of useful knowledge and behavior effectively shared with readers.
PubMedFocus groups: a useful tool for curriculum evaluation.
21 Citations1997Pamela Y. Frasier, Lisa M. Slatt +3 more
The focus group interview is compared with both quantitative and qualitative methods; when to use focus group interviews is discussed; a protocol for conducting focus groups is outlined; and a case study is offered, in which focus groups evaluated the effectiveness of a pilot preclinical curriculum.
Medical Decision MakingRelation of Physicians' Predicted Probabilities of Pneumonia to Their Utilities for Ordering Chest X-rays to Detect Pneumonia
20 Citations1992Paul S. Heckerling, Thomas G. Tape +1 more
It was concluded that physicians who experienced greater regret over missing a pneumonia than over ordering an unnecessary x-ray estimated lower probabilities of pneumonia for patients for whom they ordered x-rays, because these physicians may have had lower thresholds for ordering chest x- rays for patients with acute respiratory illness.
Medical CarePhysician Decision Making and Variation in Hospital Admission Rates for Suspected Acute Cardiac Ischemia
18 Citations1994Lee A. Green, Mark P. Becker
It is concluded that, at least for ACI, population-based area discharge rates do not necessarily reflect case-based decision rates.
European Heart JournalVariation in the use of coronary angiography in patients with unstable angina is related to differences in patient population and availability of angiography facilities, without affecting prognosis
16 Citations1996A. J. M. van Miltenburg-van Zijl, Maarten L. Simoons +3 more
The difference in angiography rate for unstable angina can be explained in part by differences in patient population and hospital facilities, but no difference was observed in physicians' assessment of patient characteristics.
Family PracticeThe application of anthropological methods in general practice research
13 Citations1996Cecil G. Helman
I would like to discuss social anthropology and its relevance to qualitative research in general practice.
JAMAInterpreting the Medical Literature: Practical Epidemiology for Clinicians
12 Citations1989Charles Radey
Any practitioner of medicine who daily watches the pile of unread journals grow on the desk, spill over to the coffee table, and invade bookshelves will find solace in Dr Gehlbach's second edition of Interpreting the Medical Literature.
Family PracticeThe method of Balint group work and its contribution to research in general practice
7 Citations1996Sally Hull
These researchers were pioneers in using qualitative research methods which, at that time, were new to medicine, but in spite of this they achieved the core task of qualitative research, which is to capture and represent the social world.
Family PracticeMeasuring Man: some problems of method
6 Citations1996David Armstrong
Despite difficulties in identifying Man's place in the old domain of Nature, the sciences of human biology made great strides during the nineteenth century and was only one of the new 'sciences of Man' that emerged to address the question 'How to know Man?'
BMJConclusions about why doctors change their practice were not supported by the data
4 Citations1997Roy M. Poses
