Subject terms
CINAHL uses the CINAHL heading "Qualitative Studies" complemented by more detailed terms, including "Phenomenological Research" and "Focus Group," etc.
On the lower half of first page of CINAHL, try selecting Qualitative- Best Balance as a Clinical Query
Subject terms: MeSH
PubMed uses "Qualitative Research" or "Nursing Methodology Research" as a SUBJECT term.
Using PubMed's Saved Search Strategies
PubMed includes saved search strategies (queries) that may help in the identification of literature relevant to health services research, including qualitative research.
Health Services Research PubMed Query
1. Click the link above
2. Enter your search
3. Select category Qualitative Research and choose narrow (usually preferable) or broad scope. Type topic terms in search box and click Go.
The narrow qualitative query looks for the words qualitative and themes in titles and abstracts of articles. A modification of this strategy is linked below. It includes the MeSH term Qualitative Research, which was added to the MeSH vocabulary in 2003. Click on the strategy to run the search in PubMed. You may then add other concepts to the search.
qualitative research [MeSH] OR qualitative[tiab] OR themes[tiab]