Abstract
BackgroundQualitative research has the potential to inform and improve health care decisions but a study based on one year of publications suggests that it is not published in prominent health care journals. A more detailed, longitudinal analysis of its availability is needed. The purpose of this study was to identify, count and compare the number of qualitative and non-qualitative research studies published in high impact health care journals, and explore trends in these data over the last decade.MethodsA bibliometric approach was used to identify and quantify qualitative articles published in 20 top general medical and health services and policy research journals from 1999 to 2008. Eligible journals were selected based on performance in four different ranking systems reported in the 2008 ISI Journal Citation Reports. Qualitative and non-qualitative research published in these journals were identified by searching MEDLINE, and validated by hand-searching tables of contents for four journals.ResultsThe total number of qualitative research articles published during 1999 to 2008 in ten general medical journals ranged from 0 to 41, and in ten health services and policy research journals from 0 to 39. Over this period the percentage of empirical research articles that were qualitative ranged from 0% to 0.6% for the general medical journals, and 0% to 6.4% for the health services and policy research journals.ConclusionsThis analysis suggests that qualitative research it is rarely published in high impact general medical and health services and policy research journals. The factors that contribute to this persistent marginalization need to be better understood.
Highlights
Qualitative research has the potential to inform and improve health care decisions but a study based on one year of publications suggests that it is not published in prominent health care journals
This analysis suggests that qualitative research it is rarely published in high impact general medical and health services and policy research journals
This study found that very few qualitative studies were published in 20 high impact general medical and health services and policy research journals relative to nonqualitative research, and publishing rates of qualitative studies in these journals remained consistently low over the period from 1999 to 2008
Summary
Qualitative research has the potential to inform and improve health care decisions but a study based on one year of publications suggests that it is not published in prominent health care journals. Long characterized as anecdotal or subject to biases, qualitative research has had a much lower profile than quantitative research in health care decision making [5,6]. This may be partly related to the observation that few qualitative studies appear to be published in major health care journals, which remain a primary means of disseminating research. McKibbon’s analysis of qualitative studies published in clinical journals during the year 2000 showed that 0.6% of research
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