It is often intriguing how public health researchers who are trained in epidemiology alone and with little exposure to wider methodological approaches in social sciences, particularly around the use of theories and on the use of narrative and qualitative approaches in health policy, health systems, and wider development literature gets stuck with a common set of "problems" due to which they often feel, a given study invariably using *qualitative approaches* to public health programs --> **unscientific**. Of course, I use the term unscientific to also include various other characterizations that tend to reduce the overall value and worth of the qualitative and social science approaches such as subjective or biased and such. ![[Screenshot 2026-02-02 at 11.53.26 AM.png]] Read full paper [here](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13012-025-01474-z) This [recent paper by Andrea Nevdal and colleagues](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13012-025-01474-z) published in implementation science is an excellent read to dispel some of these misperceptions. They argue about the centrality of qualitative research for implementation science, but I feel that this paper's overall approach applies to wider social sciences and theorization approaches as well. They pick up 10 misperceptions and they try to address how these misperceptions about qualitative approaches can be dispelled. ![[13012_2025_1474_Fig2_HTML.png.webp]] The first five misperceptions have to do with applying standards from quantitative evaluation to qualitative methods. Here for instance, the idea that qualitative methods are overly subjective or that they have very small sample sizes. The fact that they are not statistically generalizable. The misperception that the results in qualitative inquiries also need to have numbers and finally on the lack of inter-rater reliability. So these are the first five. The other five have to do with applying inappropriate qualitative standards. For example, on saturation, on member checking, on the need for coding and the need for themes and the need for software. Overall the paper is an important read particularly for journal editors, reviewers, and others with largely epidemiological training who might misconstrue how qualitative methods apply in public health research. The paper has importance much beyond implementation science although the framing is largely towards the implementation science community. In figure two they in fact provide a nice graphic which can be put up as a poster in multiple workplaces to constantly remind people about this. Last updated: 2026-02-02 11:46