Development of a critical appraisal tool for assessing the reporting quality of qualitative studies: a worked example

Conducting a critical appraisal is considered as one of the essential steps in any type of qualitative synthesis. While various appraisal tools are available in the literature, the reliability and validity of these tools tend to be limited due to inconsistencies in their conceptualizations and operationalizations. In addition, limited practical guidelines are available for researchers to develop and use these appraisal form for their own synthesis studies. Our goal for this study is to use and modify components of existing tools and work to address the concerns that have been laid out in existing research. Specifically, we set out to (a) keep detailed notes of our development of the appraisal tool over time, (b) attend to the inter-rater reliability and content validity of the appraisal tool, (c) provide a guidance on how to use the tool, and (d) produce an appraisal tool that could be used by all levels of researchers. In this paper, we explain the process we undertook to establish a reliable and valid critical appraisal tool for qualitative syntheses, share the developed 22-question critical appraisal form, and provide an example of how to use the results of a critical appraisal in a sample qualitative synthesis. The developed tool will help focus qualitative synthesis researchers’ attention on the transparency and completeness of the information reported in primary studies and thereby increase the credibility of a qualitative synthesis.