Adherence to the COREQ Guideline in Reporting Qualitative Studies Published in Iranian Nursing Journals in 2016-2018

Qualitative studies in the world have been growing and COREQ is the guideline that evaluates these articles. Earlier studies have compared non-nursing qualitative research or quantitative research with standard guidelines, but, to the best of researcher’s knowledge, no comparative study of qualitative nursing studies with COREQ is available. Therefore, the present study was designed to fill this gap.

This descriptive study was performed on qualitative articles from 2016 to 2018. Demographic information questionnaire and COREQ checklist (32 items) were used for data collection. Data were analyzed using SPSS software version 16.

The results indicated that most of the items in the reviewed articles were in line with the guidelines. Comparing articles in English and Farsi journals, in three different years, and different academic types showed that adherence to some items (10, 15, 18, 25, 28, 29, 30, and 31) and domain 1 was different.

Not complying with the COREQ items in the qualitative articles published in Iranian journals suggests this point to editors, writers, and researchers that they should consider available standards more precisely to obtain scientific and authentic results.