Call for action

Have you, or anyone you know, encountered barriers to disseminating a qualitative study or specific qualitative study findings due to their content or message? We invite you to share your experiences.

Your input will help us better understand and address how non-dissemination of qualitative evidence affects qualitative evidence syntheses, guideline development and decision-making and confidence therein.

About this call and how your responses will be used

Should the collected information prove informative, we would consider developing a case-series publication to share the findings with the scientific community. By contributing, you help strengthen transparency and completeness in qualitative evidence and support improvements in guideline development and health research practices.

Background

Research shows that non-publication of qualitative research is both conceptually important and empirically observable. It can arise throughout the research and publication process and pose a threat to the completeness and trustworthiness of qualitative evidence syntheses. Empirical data confirm that many qualitative studies never reach full publication. The GRADE-CERQual guidance highlights how missing or selectively reported qualitative studies can potentially undermine assessments of confidence in synthesis findings (see Booth et al 2018, doi: 10.1186/s13012-017-0694-5).

Who we are?
We are an international group of researchers with expertise in qualitative research and/or evidence synthesis methods. This research is led by Ingrid Toews from the Institute for Evidence in Medicine in Freiburg, Germany. Collaborators are: Jörg J. Meerpohl, Simon Lewin, Claire Glenton, Heather Munthe-Kaas, Andrew Booth and Jane Noyes.