E-DRUG: How to read a paper
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BMJ No 7110 Volume 315
Education and debate Saturday 20 September 1997
How to read a paper
Papers that go beyond numbers (qualitative research)
Trisha Greenhalgh, Rod Taylor
This is the last in a series of 10 articles introducing non-experts
to finding medical articles and assessing their value
Summary points
Qualitative methods aim to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena
in terms of the meanings people bring to them
Qualitative research may define preliminary questions which can
then be addressed in quantitative studies
A good qualitative study will address a clinical problem through a
clearly formulated question and using more than one research
method (triangulation)
Analysis of qualitative data can and should be done using explicit,
systematic, and reproducible methods
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