SCIENTIFIC RIGOUR IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH - EXAMPLES FROM A STUDY OF WOMENS HEALTH IN FAMILY-PRACTICE

The increase in qualitative research in family medicine raises a deman d for critical discussions about design, methods and conclusions. This article shows how scientific claims for truthful findings and neutral ity can be assessed. Established concepts such as validity, reliabilit y, objectivity and generalization cannot be used in qualitative resear ch. Alternative criteria for scientific rigour, initially introduced b y Lincoln and Guba, are presented: credibility, dependability, confirm ability and transferability. These criteria have been applied to a res earch project, a qualitative study with in-depth interviews with femal e patients suffering from chronic pain in the locomotor system. The in terview data were analysed on the basis of grounded theory. The propos ed indicators for scientific rigour were shown to be useful when appli ed to the research project. Several examples are given. Difficulties i n the use of the alternative criteria are also discussed.