ABSTRACT
Introduction The question of what can be done to make the best and most effective use of best evidence is something that has remained problematic for those in the fi eld of qualitative research. Since the mid-1980s there have been many attempts to try to combine qualitative fi ndings in ways that are useful and informative, most notably the work of Noblit and Hare (1988). However, most attempts to date have resulted in approaches that are specializations, complex and refi ned in both application and technique, and for many are diffi cult to adopt. Qualitative research synthesis enables researchers to summarize existing studies in ways that are informative to policy makers and practitioners, and also enables the knowledge gained through such studies to be more widely available to others. It is an approach that is methodologically grounded and rigorous since it seeks to answer a specifi c research question through combining qualitative studies that use thick description and that are located in broadly the same tradition. This chapter will describe and argue for qualitative research synthesis, an approach that uses qualitative methods to combine the results from qualitative studies. Through our description we outline our methodologically grounded approach for analyzing, synthesizing and interpreting existing qualitative studies, and provide specifi c details and examples of how the approach works in practice. This approach will thus make the fi ndings of existing qualitative research studies more accessible to those who make decisions, both practitioners and policy makers.
