ArticleBMC health services research2011
Paucity of qualitative research in general medical and health services and policy research journals: analysis of publication rates.
Article in BMC health services research, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A mixed-method analysis to identify the current focus, trends, and gaps in health science research in Saudi Arabia.Frontiers in public health · 2022Pooled it
- Qualitative studies of insomnia: Current state of knowledge in the field.Sleep medicine reviews · 2017Pooled it
- Content Generalizability: Generalizing Qualitative Research to the General Study Population.Methods and protocols · 2026Article
- Review
- Optimizing qualitative methods in implementation research: a resource for editors, reviewers, authors, and researchers to dispel ten common misperceptions about qualitative research methods.Implementation science : IS · 2025Article
- Latine Immigrant Perspectives on Trust of Clinical Research.Hispanic health care international : the official journal of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses · 2025Article
- Utilizing Artificial Intelligence to Facilitate Qualitative Surgical Research.Annals of surgery open : perspectives of surgical history, education, and clinical approaches · 2025Article
- Article
- Broadening the Environmental Lens to Include Social and Structural Determinants of Women's Health Disparities.Environmental health perspectives · 2024Article
- Curated collections for educators: Nine key articles and article series for teaching qualitative research methods.AEM education and training · 2023Article
- Review
- Enriching Clinical Encounters Through Qualitative Research.Journal of patient experience · 2022Article
- A commitment and call to strengthen and expand qualitative research efforts to improve the impact of antimicrobial stewardship.JAC-antimicrobial resistance · 2021Review
- Cross-sectional analysis of bibliometrics and altmetrics: comparing the impact of qualitative and quantitative articles in theBMJ open · 2020Article
- Facilitating equal access to primary care for all: work experiences of health mediators in a primary health care model programme in Hungary.BMC family practice · 2020Article
- Co-production in health policy and management: a comprehensive bibliometric review.BMC health services research · 2020Review
- Critical Appraisal of Qualitative Studies of Muslim Females' Perceptions of Physical Activity Barriers and Facilitators.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2019Review
- Article
- Aging and orthopedics: how a lifespan development model can inform practice and research.Canadian journal of surgery. Journal canadien de chirurgie · 2016Review
- Are we overlooking the qualitative 'look' of obesity?Nutrition & diabetes · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
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.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.