title: Qualitative evaluation: a critical and interpretative complementary approach to improve health programs and services.
abstract: This short essay aims at commenting on the origin, development, rationale, and main characteristics of qualitative evaluation (QE), emphasizing the value of this methodological tool to evaluate health programs and services. During the past decades, different approaches have come to light proposing complementary alternatives to appraise the performance of public health programs, mainly focusing on the implementation process involved rather than on measuring the impact of such actions. QE is an alternative tool that can be used to illustrate and understand the process faced when executing health programs. It can also lead to useful suggestions to modify its implementation from the stakeholders' perspectives, as it uses a qualitative approach that considers participants as reflective subjects, generators of meanings. This implies that beneficiaries become involved in an active manner in the evaluated phenomena with the aim of improving the health programs or services that they receive. With this work we want to encourage evaluators in the field of public health to consider the use of QE as a complementary tool for program evaluation to be able to identify areas of opportunity to improve programs' implementation processes from the perspective of intended beneficiaries.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Nursing, San Luis Potosi Autonomous University, San Luis Potosi, Mexico; ltejada@uaslp.mx.
authors.forename: Luz María Tejada
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Tayabas
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology, Autonomous University of Yucatan, Yucatan, Mexico.
authors.forename: Teresita Castillo
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: León
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Joel Monarrez
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Espino
mesh_terms: D006302:Health Services Research / Q000379:methods*; D015397:Program Evaluation / Q000379:methods; D036301:Qualitative Research; D012107:Research Design
keywords: Qualitative evaluation; health care services; health programs; qualitative research