Qualitative description – the poor cousin of health research ? Mette

Background: The knowledge and use of qualitative description as a qualitative research approach in health services research is limited. The aim of this article is to discuss the potential benefits of a qualitative descriptive approach, to identify its strengths and weaknesses and to provide examples of use. Discussion: Qualitative description is a useful qualitative method in much medical research if you keep the limitations of the approach in mind. It is especially relevant in mixed method research, in questionnaire development and in research projects aiming to gain firsthand knowledge of patients', relatives' or professionals' experiences with a particular topic. Another great advantage of the method is that it is suitable if time or resources are limited. Summary: As a consequence of the growth in qualitative research in the health sciences, researchers sometimes feel obliged to designate their work as phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography or a narrative study when in fact it is not. Qualitative description might be a useful alternative approach to consider. Background The growth in qualitative health sciences research has led to the introduction of a vast array of qualitative methodologies, resulting in what Margarete Sandelowski has called 'methodological acrobatics' [1], meaning that researchers sometimes feel obliged to designate their work as phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography or a narrative study when in fact it is not. This may result in 'posturing' and does not make any methodological or theoretical contributions. Furthermore, it may neglect the benefits of an alternative approach, namely qualitative description [1]. The knowledge and use of qualitative description (QD) as a qualitative research approach in health research is limited and is often criticised for being too simple and lacking rigour [1,2]. However, proper use of the method can provide useful data tailoring clinical interventions, scales, needs assessments and questionnaires in mixed method studies or in relation to small independent research projects [3]. The aim of this article is to discuss the potential benefits of a QD approach, to identify its strengths and weaknesses and to provide examples of use. Published: 16 July 2009 BMC Medical Research Methodology 2009, 9:52 doi:10.1186/1471-2288-9-52 Received: 27 November 2008 Accepted: 16 July 2009 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/9/52 © 2009 Neergaard et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.