Establishing confidence in the output of qualitative research synthesis: the ConQual approach

The importance of findings derived from syntheses of qualitative research has been increasingly acknowledged. Findings that arise from qualitative syntheses inform questions of practice and policy in their own right and are commonly used to complement findings from quantitative research syntheses. The GRADE approach has been widely adopted by international organisations to rate the quality and confidence of the findings of quantitative systematic reviews. To date, there has been no widely accepted corresponding approach to assist health care professionals and policy makers in establishing confidence in the synthesised findings of qualitative systematic reviews.

A methodological group was formed develop a process to assess the confidence in synthesised qualitative research findings and develop a Summary of Findings tables for meta-aggregative qualitative systematic reviews.