Complexity of the Paradigms Present in Quality Criteria of Qualitative Research Grids

With qualitative methods being increasingly used in health sciencefields, numerous grids proposing criteria to evaluate the quality of this type ofresearch have been produced. Expert evaluators deem that there is a lack of consensualtools to evaluate qualitative research. Based on the review of 133 quality criteriagrids for qualitative research in health sciences, the authors present the results of acomputerized lexicometric analysis, which confirms the variety of intra- and inter-gridconstructions, including within the same field. This variety is linked to the authors’paradigmatic references underlying the criteria proposed. These references seem to bebuilt intuitively, reflecting internal representations of qualitative research, thusmaking the grids and their criteria hard to compare. Consequently, the consensus on thedefinitions and the number of criteria becomes problematic. The paradigmatic andtheoretical references of the grids should be specified so that users could betterassess their contributions and limitations