Enhancing transparency in reporting the synthesis of qualitative research: ENTREQ

TLDR

Qualitative syntheses combine data from diverse contexts, generate new models, identify gaps, and inform health intervention development, implementation, and evaluation. This study develops a reporting framework for qualitative health research synthesis. The authors performed a comprehensive literature search of guidance, reviews, and published syntheses in MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, and relevant websites up to May 2011, inductively generated checklist items, and refined them through pilot testing on forty diverse syntheses. The resulting ENTREQ statement comprises 21 items across five domains—introduction, methods, literature search, appraisal, and synthesis—and aims to standardize reporting of key stages such as searching, selecting, appraising, and synthesizing qualitative findings.

Abstract

The syntheses of multiple qualitative studies can pull together data across different contexts, generate new theoretical or conceptual models, identify research gaps, and provide evidence for the development, implementation and evaluation of health interventions. This study aims to develop a framework for reporting the synthesis of qualitative health research. We conducted a comprehensive search for guidance and reviews relevant to the synthesis of qualitative research, methodology papers, and published syntheses of qualitative health research in MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL and relevant organisational websites to May 2011. Initial items were generated inductively from guides to synthesizing qualitative health research. The preliminary checklist was piloted against forty published syntheses of qualitative research, purposively selected to capture a range of year of publication, methods and methodologies, and health topics. We removed items that were duplicated, impractical to assess, and rephrased items for clarity. The Enhancing transparency in reporting the synthesis of qualitative research (ENTREQ) statement consists of 21 items grouped into five main domains: introduction, methods and methodology, literature search and selection, appraisal, and synthesis of findings. The ENTREQ statement can help researchers to report the stages most commonly associated with the synthesis of qualitative health research: searching and selecting qualitative research, quality appraisal, and methods for synthesising qualitative findings. The synthesis of qualitative research is an expanding and evolving methodological area and we would value feedback from all stakeholders for the continued development and extension of the ENTREQ statement.