Vol. 4, Issue 2 (2015)

Author(s):
Binu Santha, Hongal Sudheer, Vrinda Saxena, Vidhatri Tiwari

Abstract:
The field of dental research is a systematic approach of judging, documenting, analysing and reporting unusual clinical observations that we come across in everyday clinical practice. Current issues in dentistry which include a focus on patients’ wishes for outcomes and dentists’ role in that process raise questions that can be addressed by Qualitative methods of study. Qualitative research is concerned with qualitative phenomena and includes subjective assessment of attitudes, opinions and behaviour. This present review was conducted with the objective of providing an overview of the potential role of Qualitative Study designs, understand the method of Qualitative research, its common approaches and resources to explore their potential for dental research. Identify and report the common approaches to Qualitative methods in Dental Research, understand the implications of Qualitative research in Dentistry and report a framework for conducting Qualitative research pertaining to Public Health Dentistry. Reference lists from relevant articles retrieved from electronic data bases from 1980 to 2013 and specific and standard textbooks related to Research Methodology and Qualitative Research methods for health research were used for the search. The initial search strategy yielded 650 articles of these 35 were considered in the present review. The identical key articles on Qualitative research methods have been used to provide practical methods and approaches in the present paper.