Quality appraisal of published qualitative dental, medical and health researches in Iranian Persian language journals

BACKGROUND and AIM: This study aimed to determine the rate of published qualitative research in the field of public health including dental researches in Iran and to appraise their quality. METHODS: A total of 165 articles which published in 170 Iranian Medical Journals between years 2000 and 2014 were found eligible to the study. 48 papers were selected randomly. The papers were appraised by two calibrated reviewer using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) appraisal framework for qualitative research. RESULTS: Only 2 studies (about 4%) were on dental topics. About 82% (38-48) studies had sufficient reporting regarding aims, study design, recruitment and data collection, data analysis, finding and implication of research. Only 12 articles (25%) had an adequate discussion of the study limitations. Overall, the assessment showed that 27 papers (about 56%) of studies were well conducted. CONCLUSION: Qualitative methods are underutilized on dentistry topics, and the quality of qualitative research on health topics in medical journals of Iran is mediocre.