Quality, not just quantity: the role of qualitative methods in anesthesia research

Abstract

1 present their study describing how anesthesiolo-gists use physiological monitors to identify three critical ventilatory events. To understand clini-cians' cognitive processes for identifying these events, the authors began their study by conducting several structured interviews. Subsequently, insights from these interviews guided the development of consen-sus-based diagnostic criteria. Readers will note that this paper differs from the randomized controlled trials, cohort studies, case-con-trol studies, cross-sectional studies, or meta-analyses typically seen in the clinical anesthesia literature. There is no mention of specific pre-defined hypotheses, sample size calculations, statistical tests, P-values, or 95% confidence intervals. Instead, the authors used a qualitative approach to answer their research ques-tion. What is qualitative research? For readers unfamil-iar with this methodology, it might best be described in comparison to the more traditional quantitative research methodology. Quantitative research generally involves pre-specified hypotheses, collection of quantifiable data (e.g., hos-pital length of stay, visual analogue pain scores), and statistical analysis of these data to test the hypotheses. Quantitative methods generally perform well when determining whether an intervention has benefit, or when establishing how much a factor influences an outcome. 2