A multi-criterion model for evaluating the quality of qualitative research

Abstract

The aim of this technological article is to propose a multi-criterion model to evaluate the quality of qualitative research. The justification for the work is the growing number of qualitative researches and the scarcity of objetive evaluation methods for this kind of research. The theoretical foundation is the quality literature of qualitative research. The method employed is ELECTRE TRI because it meets the requirements of the problem analyzed, such as multiple criteria and problematic classification. In modeling, seven criteria (theoretical consistency, relevance of the search, data fidelity, transferability of the results, credibility of the results, textual and ethical clarity) and three classes (accepted, revise and resubmit and rejected) were defined. The validation of the model was carried out with a specialist in qualitative methods, who also defined the test parameters. The model was tested with ten qualitative articles published in annals of a national scientific event following the parameters pre-established by the specialist. The results show that the model ranked the ten articles among the three predefined classes, with only one article reaching the "approved" class. The model can be used by scientific journals to standardize the process of evaluating qualitative research and to help the preparation of opinions.