The traditional quantitative emphasis of health services research obscures the fact that qualitative techniques are the best means of investigating the evaluation of certain health services
research problems. Two evaluation studies employing qualitative methods are described to
illustrate the appropriateness of such methods for addressing certain research questions. A brief
discussion of current opinion concerning reliability and validity issues associated with these
methods is provided A detailed description of the techniques that can be used to improve the
rigor and credibility of qualitative methods in evaluation research concludes this article.
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