Open AccessAre qualitative methods misunderstood?
Author(s) -
Ezzy Douglas
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of public health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.946
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1753-6405
pISSN - 1326-0200
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-842x.2001.tb00582.x
Subject(s) - qualitative research , realisation , sociology , natural (archaeology) , qualitative property , public health , product (mathematics) , focus (optics) , management science , epistemology , engineering ethics , social science , computer science , medicine , engineering , geography , nursing , philosophy , physics , geometry , mathematics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , machine learning , optics
Qualitative research methods are increasingly utilised by health researchers. Along with this the criteria for assessing the quality of qualitative research are changing from a natural science model to an interpretative social science model. This is a product of the realisation by health researchers that qualitative methods utilise a different epistemology to statistical methods. I demonstrate that a recent article in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health draws on a now outdated natural science methodology of assessing bias in focus groups. Drawing on interpretativist social science theory and recent work in the British Medical Journal I argue for the importance of examining the social contexts through which qualitative data is produced.