Objective: This paper reviewed and examined the quality of all the qualitative evaluation studies indexed by two key search terms of “qualitative” and “evaluation” in the Social Work Abstracts database from 1990 t...Objective: This paper reviewed and examined the quality of all the qualitative evaluation studies indexed by two key search terms of “qualitative” and “evaluation” in the Social Work Abstracts database from 1990 to 2003 against a number of criteria typically adopted in the field of qualitative research. The review led to a dissatisfactory finding of the low quality of many qualitative evaluation studies due to their insensitivity to the following issues: philosophical basis of the study, auditability (detailed documentation of the participants and data collecting procedure), biases (acknowledgement of biases and preoccupation, and steps to deal with them), credibility or trustworthiness (triangulation, peer checking and participant verification of the findings), consistency (reliability consciousness and audit trails), and critical interpretation of the data (alternative explanations, disconfirming evidence, and limitations of the study). It was recommended that researchers be cautious when utilizing findings from the published qualitative evaluation studies; that social workers be sensitive to the issue of quality when conducting qualitative evaluation studies; that researchers be critical when judging the qualitative evaluation studies in social work; that researchers develop a clear set of guidelines for qualitative studies; that social work training institutes design qualified qualitative research courses; that a database of social work in China be established; that researchers be engaged in more qualitative studies that demonstrate high quality; that myths in qualitative research be debunked; and that adequate training for social workers on qualitative evaluation studies be provided.展开更多
文摘Objective: This paper reviewed and examined the quality of all the qualitative evaluation studies indexed by two key search terms of “qualitative” and “evaluation” in the Social Work Abstracts database from 1990 to 2003 against a number of criteria typically adopted in the field of qualitative research. The review led to a dissatisfactory finding of the low quality of many qualitative evaluation studies due to their insensitivity to the following issues: philosophical basis of the study, auditability (detailed documentation of the participants and data collecting procedure), biases (acknowledgement of biases and preoccupation, and steps to deal with them), credibility or trustworthiness (triangulation, peer checking and participant verification of the findings), consistency (reliability consciousness and audit trails), and critical interpretation of the data (alternative explanations, disconfirming evidence, and limitations of the study). It was recommended that researchers be cautious when utilizing findings from the published qualitative evaluation studies; that social workers be sensitive to the issue of quality when conducting qualitative evaluation studies; that researchers be critical when judging the qualitative evaluation studies in social work; that researchers develop a clear set of guidelines for qualitative studies; that social work training institutes design qualified qualitative research courses; that a database of social work in China be established; that researchers be engaged in more qualitative studies that demonstrate high quality; that myths in qualitative research be debunked; and that adequate training for social workers on qualitative evaluation studies be provided.
