# Expert stakeholders on the role of qualitative research in World Health Organisation guidelines

## TL;DR

This paper explores how qualitative research can be better integrated into World Health Organization guidelines to improve their relevance and context.

## Contribution

The study provides insights on systematically incorporating qualitative research into guideline development processes.

## Key findings

- Experts support using qualitative research in WHO guidelines and provide examples of its usefulness.
- Clinical decision-making in guidelines can be too detached from social contexts.
- Qualitative research can help tailor recommendations to specific contexts.

## Abstract

Qualitative research findings are sometimes used in guideline development, but usually in an ad hoc manner. We sought to explore how qualitative research could contribute to guideline development, identify examples of qualitative research being used to inform guideline development, and gather suggestions for how qualitative research might be incorporated more systematically in guideline development. Using a topic guide, in 2022–24, we interviewed experts who had participated in World Health Organization (WHO) guideline development. We used purposeful sampling, including qualitative researchers, guideline developers, guideline panel members, and implementation researchers. We interviewed 16 participants, and identified three themes: (i) respondents endorsed using qualitative research findings in developing WHO guidelines, and highlighted examples where this approach had been useful; (ii) recommendation questions in the guideline process are built on clinical decision-making, which can sometimes be too detached from social contexts for broader health problems; (iii) using qualitative research findings to help delineate context has a greater potential role in guidelines. We interpret these findings to indicate that qualitative research could be used more systematically, particularly to inform a broader framing of a health problem, or later in recommendations, to tailor to particular contexts.