• Leahora Rotteau, Mathieu Albert, Onil Bhattacharyya, Whitney Berta, and Fiona Webster.
• Institute for Healthcare Policy, Measurement and Evaluation, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
• J Eval Clin Pract. 2021 Apr 1; 27 (2): 264-271.

Rational, Aims, And ObjectivesQualitative research has been promoted as an important component of the evaluation of complex interventions to support the scale up and spread of health service interventions, but is currently not being maximized in practice. We aim to identify and explore the sociocultural and structural factors that impact the uses (and misuses) of qualitative research in the evaluation of complex health services interventions.MethodsWe conducted a qualitative analysis of data collected in a multiple case study of the evaluation and scale up and spread of three health service intervention.ResultsOur findings demonstrate the challenges of meaningfully integrating qualitative research in evaluation programmes lead by clinicians with limited qualitative expertise and operating within an environment dominated by biomedical research, even with methodological support.ConclusionsBased on these findings we encourage ongoing engagement of qualitative researchers in evaluation programmes to begin to refine our methodological understanding, while also suggesting changes to medical education and evaluation funding models to create fertile environments for interdisciplinary collaborations.© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

8 keywords...

hide…