Beyond templates: methodological reporting practices and their impact in qualitative service research

Epistemology in qualitative research

Far from being a unified paradigm, qualitative research encompasses numerous epistemological perspectives and methodological traditions (Bansal et al., 2018; Cunliffe, 2011). Epistemology refers to basic assumptions about the knowledge we can gain about a studied phenomenon. To illustrate how different these perspectives are and how their inherent assumptions influence the evaluation of qualitative research, we next briefly introduce three commonly adopted epistemological perspectives in qualitative research (cf. Amis and Silk, 2008; Welch and Piekkari, 2017): positivism, constructivism and interpretivism. Although the three do not present an exhaustive list of possible epistemological positions (cf. Cunliffe, 2011; Guba and Lincoln, 1994), they encapsulate well the diversity of qualitative research.

Methodological rigor in qualitative research

As demonstrated by the above examples, all qualitative articles seek different degrees to convince their readers of the credibility of the emerging theoretical claims through contextualization: providing a rich, believable description of a phenomenon (Corley et al., 2021; Ketokivi and Mantere, 2010). This contrasts with quantitative research, which generally relies on idealization: simplification of a phenomenon to enable the use of statistics and adherence to specific analysis procedures and methods (Ketokivi and Mantere, 2010). Related, the criteria used to assess the methodological rigor of research differ considerably between quantitative and qualitative methods. Whereas quantitative studies have recourse to clearly defined and universally accepted criteria such as construct validity and reliability, the criteria used to evaluate qualitative research are less well-defined and vary greatly between different methodologies (Symon et al., 2018; Welch and Piekkari, 2017).

For example, the criteria applied to assess the methodological rigor of positivist qualitative studies follows closely the traditional criteria of quantitative research: validity and reliability (Amis and Silk, 2008). Subsequently, many authors have sought to elaborate specific criteria for assessing validity and reliability in qualitative research (Beverland and Lindgreen, 2010; Gibbert et al., 2008; Gibbert and Ruigrok, 2010; Gnyawali and Song, 2016). By contrast, constructivist research suggests that validity and reliability should be replaced with the notion of trustworthiness that builds on the credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability of a study (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Amis and Silk, 2008). Although much less has been written on these criteria than on positivist notions of rigor, some authors have sought to elaborate detailed criteria for them (Järvensivu and Törnroos, 2010; Lincoln and Guba, 1986; Welch and Piekkari, 2017). As noted by Sandberg (2005), “few studies have sought to identify the criteria that could be used for justifying results produced within interpretive approaches in a systematic way.” While some scholars have sought to elaborate on what “rigor” might mean for interpretive research (Golden-Biddle and Locke, 1993; Jarzabkowski et al., 2014; Leitch et al., 2010; Zilber and Zanoni, 2022), there is considerable divergence on what criteria should be applied. Some examples of criteria suggested for interpretivist research include a commitment to authenticity, researcher reflexivity and catalytic validity (cf. Lincoln and Guba, 1986; Sandberg, 2005).

Given this diversity and the contingency of criteria on epistemological perspective and specific methodology, assessing the methodological rigor of qualitative research can be challenging (Corley et al., 2021; Pratt et al., 2022). The lack of clear criteria can be particularly bewildering to quantitative scholars who are used to definite rules and heuristics for judging the credibility of empirical research. Due to these challenges in assessment, many qualitative scholars have felt compelled to adopt methodological templates (Harley and Cornelissen, 2022; Köhler et al., 2022). These templates are “standardized ways of conducting research that are used as formulas for shaping the methods themselves, especially data collection and analysis” (Pratt et al., 2022, p. 2).

While methodological templates can improve the efficiency of research by suggesting a standardized research process and a blueprint for reporting the methodology and findings, thus potentially easing the communication of results to other scholars (Corley et al., 2021; Köhler et al., 2022), they also come with considerable downsides. Their nonreflexive use can lead to inflexible research that becomes detached from the strengths of qualitative data and the opportunities arising from its open-endedness (Eisenhardt et al., 2016; Graebner et al., 2012). Template use may also lead to quasi-transparency when certain methodological details are reported but some aspects important for understanding the inferential process are not expected to be disclosed (Mees-Buss et al., 2022; Pratt et al., 2022). On the level of research communities, requiring scholars to adhere to specific methodological templates can reduce methodological diversity and hence diminish the potential for original research and novel insights (Corley et al., 2021; Cornelissen, 2017). Since most of the commonly employed methodological templates are based on case study research and assumptions of positivist or constructivist epistemology (Mees-Buss et al., 2022; Pratt et al., 2022), they can hinder the adoption of more interpretive or critical approaches to qualitative research (Cornelissen, 2017).

Methodological reporting in qualitative research

Similar to Tracy (2010), Verleye (2019) and Pratt et al. (2022), we argue that to embrace the full diversity of qualitative methods we must forgo strict methodological templates and accept that valid research designs and criteria for assessing the rigor of qualitative research depend on the specific epistemology and methodology. Yet, the medium for communicating methodological details and findings, the research article, remains constant for all methodologies. Prior authors have noted that methodological reporting is often lackluster in qualitative research. For example, Gephart (2004) notes that authors commonly underspecify the employed qualitative methods, suggesting that the primary issue is with insufficient reporting rather than meeting specific evaluative criteria. Similarly, Graebner et al. (2012) suggest that instead of relying on templates, authors should “be more precise regarding how and when constructs and relationships emerge during the research process.” Hence, methodological reporting is crucial regardless of what specific methods were applied and how their rigor is assessed.

Our study thus focuses on methodological reporting practices, such as the data sources used in a study or how interviews were conducted. Prior methodological literature has commonly discussed the use of reporting practices to enhance methodological rigor. However, prior contributions have generally focused on specific qualitative methodologies, such as case studies (Beverland and Lindgreen, 2010; Gibbert and Ruigrok, 2010), interpretive research (Leitch et al., 2010; Sandberg, 2005) or ethnography (Golden-Biddle and Locke, 1993; Jarzabkowski et al., 2014). While some authors have sought to outline a more general approach for evaluating qualitative research (Jonsen et al., 2018; Pratt et al., 2022; Reay et al., 2019; Tracy, 2010), prior literature has not systematically explored reporting practices applicable across different qualitative methodologies.

Data collection

Our study focused on qualitative research published in three prominent service journals: Journal of Service Research (JSR, 2020 impact factor 10.67), Journal of Service Management [1] (JOSM, impact factor 11.77) and Journal of Services Marketing (JSM, impact factor 4.47). These journals were selected because they are widely recognized as influential publications in the field, and their combined coverage spans a broad range of service-related topics. JOSM focuses mostly on service management and innovation, while JSM leans toward service marketing, and JSR covers all service topics. By analyzing the qualitative research published in these journals, we hoped to identify similarities and differences in the reporting of qualitative methods and variations in their impact.

We extracted bibliometric data on articles published in the three journals between 1998 and 2020 from the Scopus database, excluding non-research items such as editorials and retraction notes. We selected this period for three reasons. First, JSR was first published in 1998, which allowed us to include all three journals for the widest possible period. Second, this period is characterized by relative stability in the methodologies employed in service research (Valtakoski, 2020), which facilitated meaningful comparisons across the years. Third, the limitation ensured the availability of bibliometric data for all included articles. In total, we retrieved full bibliometric data, including all references, for 2,282 articles (JSR 564 articles, JOSM 647 articles and JSM 1071 articles). The bibliometric data were processed using the bibliometrix package for R (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017).

Identification of qualitative articles

We employed a multi-stage screening process to identify articles that use qualitative methods. Initially, we reviewed the titles and abstracts of all articles published in the three journals. If the titles and abstracts did not provide sufficient information, we also reviewed the introduction and methodology sections of the articles. We excluded articles that were purely quantitative, used formal modelling or did not collect any empirical data. We also omitted mixed methods articles with a dominant quantitative part, as well as articles that were purely conceptual, literature reviews, editorials, commentaries or focused on methodology. Finally, we excluded purely conceptual articles that used cases only as illustrations of theoretical concepts. After applying these exclusion criteria, we had 318 relevant qualitative research articles for further analysis (49 in JSR, 134 in JOSM and 135 in JSM).

Identification of reporting practices

The process of analyzing the reporting practices in qualitative research proceeded as depicted in Figure 1. We first reviewed extant literature on qualitative methodology to identify tentative areas of methodological reporting. Based on this preliminary understanding, we proceeded to analyze the reporting practices employed in the qualitative service articles. We began by independently reading and analyzing 18 articles chosen based on their representativeness of different methodologies, journals and time periods, focusing on the introduction, methodology, findings and discussion sections of the articles to find reporting practices. Yet, we often had to read the entire article due to considerable divergence in how employed methods were reported. We then discussed our conclusions together to create a tentative list of reporting practices and a corresponding codebook for further analysis, simultaneously abductively developing a categorization of the practices that would correspond with the prior methodological literature. During subsequent analysis, the codebook was updated and altered whenever we encountered practices that would not fit into one of the existing categories. We also updated the reporting categorization of the practices based on further analysis and discussions. In the end, we identified 29 specific reporting practices, categorized into 9 areas of methodological reporting.

Article coding

The rest of the identified articles were coded in stages as illustrated in Figure 1. When coding the articles, we simply noted the use of reporting practices; we did not determine differences in the reporting level since this would require assuming specific evaluative criteria. Given this approach, the used of reporting practices varied considerably across the articles. This diversity was further heightened by the number of different qualitative methodologies employed in the articles. We thus encountered challenges commonly noted in the prior literature on the evaluation of qualitative research; even when focusing on the loosely defined reporting practices, identifying and evaluating these was often laborious and difficult to do consistently. One of the main difficulties was the sheer heterogeneity of methodological reporting. Particularly, in earlier publications, methodological details were frequently missing or scattered throughout the text, which compelled us to read the entire paper to find necessary details. While the consistency of reporting has improved in more recent articles, we still encountered many instances of inadequate or vague methodological reporting.

Following each independent coding phase, we compared our results and discussed any disagreements. Insights from these discussions were used to refine the codebook. In general, the disagreements were minor and typically attributable to human error, as it was easy to miss methodological details that were reported in unexpected sections of an article. Despite having relatively simple criteria to apply, we still often had to read “between the lines” and use subjective judgment of authors' intentions. Consequently, it was virtually impossible to be fully consistent when coding the articles. We would expect these difficulties to become even more pronounced when assessing the methodology against some specific rigor criteria. These experiences highlight the inherent challenges of evaluating qualitative research.

We tested for interrater reliability at two stages during the coding process. The initial test indicated that further refinement of the codebook was necessary. The final codebook was tested by coding 44 additional randomly selected articles, resulting in an agreement of 79.2% and a Cohen’s kappa of 0.59. Although the kappa value is below the recommended threshold of 0.6, the correlation of the aggregated reporting index variables (0.84) between the authors suggested sufficient reliability for our exploratory purposes.

After the second testing stage, the remaining 193 articles were distributed approximately evenly between the 2 authors and coded independently. We also jointly reviewed all training and test datasets to determine their final coding. All data were combined in a final dataset of 318 coded articles.

Dataset on reporting practices

To analyze the evolution and impact of reporting practices, we formed a longitudinal dataset consisting of the identified qualitative articles. The main variable of interest was the overall level of reporting practices, captured as the reporting index variable. This composite index was calculated as the sum of the 29 reporting practices. In other words, it captures how many of the identified practices were used by the article, treating all practices equally important. The index was scaled to the interval 0–10 for easier interpretation [2].

We used two dependent variables. Consistent with previous research examining article impact in marketing research (Kumar et al., 2017; Stremersch et al., 2015), we recorded the total number of citations received by an article in the Scopus database, a common indicator of an article’s importance within a research field. Articles that receive a high number of citations are typically considered to have a substantial impact, given that they are widely referenced by other scholars. We also included article downloads as an intermediary dependent variable (cf. Benoit et al., 2017). The number of downloads reflects an interest in an article that is not yet fully reflected in citations. We expected articles with high levels of interest within the scholarly community to receive more downloads and uses. Unfortunately, article usage data were not available from Scopus for all identified articles. Consequently, we turned to the Web of Science database which provided usage data for most remaining articles. However, neither database had usage data for some articles. Hence, we imputed missing usage data using the number of downloads reported on journal homepages and download data available on Scopus.

Since reporting practices can obviously vary depending on the employed qualitative methodology, we included methodology as a control variable. This variable was based on the methodology explicitly stated by the article authors, or alternatively our analysis of methodology. We distinguish between seven methodologies: action research, case study, critical incidence technique (CIT), grounded theory, interview study, ethnography and netnography. Interview study refers to articles such as Sharma et al. (2009) that are based on interviews of individuals but do not explicitly subscribe to a specific methodology (cf. Gephart, 2004).

We coded the purpose of each article using the typology by Graebner et al. (2012), generally based on the explicitly stated purpose of the article. We differentiated between theory development, capturing the lived experience of research subjects, elaboration of complex processes, using qualitative study as an illustration of theoretical concepts and understanding of linguistic phenomena.

Following prior research (Kumar et al., 2017; Stremersch et al., 2015), further article, journal and author characteristics were included as control variables, elaborated in Table 1. The descriptive statistics of all variables are reported in Table 2.

Methodological reporting practices in qualitative service research

Our analysis of the qualitative service articles revealed 29 commonly employed methodological reporting practices, divided into 9 areas of methodological reporting. These are described in Table 3. In the following, we briefly discuss the key areas of methodological reporting. Appendix further elaborates on the individuals reporting practices and provides examples of their use in service research.

Use of reporting practices

Table 4 summarizes the use of reporting practices categorized by employed methodology, organized along the typical epistemological positions related to each methodology. Based on this evidence, we can make the following observations.

First, confirming our arguments, we found that all reporting practices were employed across the different methodologies. However, as could be expected, not all practices were equally common across all methodologies. For example, providing an a priori rationale for research subject selection tends to be more important for positivist-oriented qualitative research. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that all reporting practices can be relevant for regardless of the specific methodology. Of course, authors need to ensure that the reported methodological details meet the expectations of the relevant epistemological perspective and rigor criteria.

Second, while most articles did provide a summary description of data analysis, few studies reported in detail how the analytical process proceeded from empirical data to theoretical insights. Regrettably, many articles simply cited commonly used methodological sources and briefly described a generic process such as open and axial coding phases or within-case and cross-case analyses without further elaborating how exactly the data were used to arrive at conclusions. While specific details of the analysis process go beyond the scope of this review, many qualitative studies could improve on the reporting of this part of the methodology.

Third, although relatively many articles (80) did note the preservation of privacy and confidentiality through the anonymity of research subjects, further discussion on ethical aspects of research was rare. Only 12 articles discussed how the impact of research and ethical issues were negotiated with research subjects and only 8 (mostly in the healthcare context) articles noted the approval of an external ethical review board. While not tracked as a specific reporting practice, details of data management beyond anonymity were only disclosed in a couple of articles. In conclusion, ethical issues are largely ignored in methodological reporting in qualitative service research.

Evolution of methodological reporting

Figure 2 depicts the evolution of the overall level of methodological reporting in the three included service journals, together with trendlines based on regression analysis. Two conclusions can be drawn from the diagram. First, there is a noticeable upward trend in the reporting index in service journals, indicating that the level of methodological reporting published articles has been rising. Second, on average, articles published in JSR exhibit a higher level of reporting compared to the other two journals. Nevertheless, the gap between the three journals has been gradually narrowing, suggesting a convergence in the extent of reporting across these journals.

We used OLS regression analysis to test for the statistical significance of these patterns. Using the reporting index as a dependent variable, we tested how the index scores are explained by publication year, the number of pages in the article, journal, purpose and type of methodology. The results of this analysis are reported in Table 5.

The overall fit of the model is decent (R² = 0.372). The results confirm the descriptive findings, revealing a positive and statistically significant relationship between publication year and reporting index (b = 0.063, p < 0.001). This indicates that the standards for methodological reporting have thus gradually risen in published qualitative service research. The number of pages of an article has a positive and significant impact on the reporting index (b = 0.055, p < 0.01). This is consistent with the expectation that more space for reporting qualitative research allows for further methodological reporting.

The results confirm that the level of methodological reporting in published articles varies across journals. Research published in JSR typically has a higher level of methodological reporting index (b = 0.947, p < 0.001) compared to articles appearing in JOSM. Methodological reporting in articles published in JSM tends to be somewhat more extensive than those published in JOSM (b = 0.412, p = 0.058).

Apart from the base category of action research, the effects of qualitative methodology on the level of methodological reporting are relatively minor. CIT and ethnography have roughly equally high coefficients. This is interesting, given the very different nature of these methodologies. For CIT, this may be attributed to the quasi-quantitative nature of the methodology and its largely standardized procedures for data collection and analysis that provide a ready “template” authors can follow. By contrast, ethnography as a methodology emphasizes author reflexivity and relies the least on methodological templates, forcing authors to explicate their methodological choices in detail. Unsurprisingly, articles which use qualitative methods only for illustration tend to use significantly more limited methodological reporting than other research types (b = −1.364, p < 0.001). The differences between the other types of qualitative study purposes are not significant.

Impact of reporting practices on article downloads and citations

The scientometric literature suggests that article citation counts are lognormally distributed (Stringer et al., 2010; Thelwall, 2016). Therefore, following a similar approach to Kumar et al. (2017), we employed OLS regression using the logarithms of total article downloads and citations as the dependent variable. To avoid undefined values when applying the logarithm function to 0 citations, we added 1 to the total number of citations and downloads before performing the transformation.

The analyses were conducted hierarchically; the results are reported in Table 6. As seen from Use Model 1, the coefficient for the reporting index, while positive, is not significant (b = 0.064, p = 0.230). While the p-value of the coefficient is somewhat improved in Use Model 2 which adds topic indicators (b = 0.081, p = 0.094), the result is still not significant, suggesting that reporting practices do not influence the use of qualitative service articles. As expected, article age has an inverted-U-shaped relationship with article downloads. Articles appearing in JSR are more likely to be downloaded than articles appearing in JOSM (b = 0.606, p < 0.01), while the difference between JOSM and JSM is nonsignificant.

Next, we examined the relationship between methodological reporting and the citations received by qualitative articles. As seen from Citation Model 1, the coefficient for reporting index was small and non-significant (b = 0.014, p = 0.801), suggesting that the extent of reporting practices does not influence article impact in terms of citations. Article age again has an inverted-U-shaped relationship with article citations. Articles that appear in JSR tend to receive more citations compared to JOSM articles (b = 0.751, p < 0.01), while the difference between citations of JSM and JOSM articles is nonsignificant. Consistent with previous research (Rosenzweig et al., 2016; Stremersch et al., 2015), we find that the authors’ characteristics influence article citations. Specifically, the number of authors (b = 0.135, p < 0.05), the inclusion of a top university author (b = 0.635, p < 0.05) and the average h index of the authors (b = 0.047, p < 0.05) are all positively related to increased citation counts. Interestingly, articles with US authors tend to receive fewer citations than articles with only non-US authors (b = −0.388, p < 0.05).

Citation Model 2 adds the topic indicators, resulting in improvement in the overall model fit without significantly altering the regression coefficients or their significance, which suggests that the above findings hold across service research topics. Finally, Citation Model 3 adds article downloads as an explanatory factor of article citations. Unsurprisingly, article downloads are strongly related to article citations (b = 0.838, p < 0.001). The overall explanatory power of the model is also considerably increased (R² = 0.739). Given that article age and journal are already key factors linked to article downloads, their direct effects on article citations are diminished. The non-significant coefficient of the methodological index (b = −0.040, p = 0.214) further indicates that methodological reporting does not significantly impact article citations.

Robustness checks

To test the robustness of our findings, we conducted identical analyses using negative binomial regression, a commonly used alternative estimation strategy to study article citations (cf. Stremersch et al., 2015). The results were consistent with our main analyses (correlation of significant standardized coefficients r = 0.99), strengthening our conclusions regarding the impact of reporting practices.

To examine the potential influence of outliers, we reconducted the analyses after excluding the most cited article in the dataset (Oliva and Kallenberg (2003), with 1,475 citations). This exclusion halved the skewness of the article citations variable. The results of the regression analyses were essentially unchanged (correlation of significant standardized coefficients r = 0.99), indicating that the main findings were not influenced by this outlier.

To explore potential variations in the impact on citations between journals, we conducted a supplementary analysis using data exclusively from JSM and JOSM, as these journals have comparable stature. Although the reduced sample size lowered significance levels, the directions and magnitudes of the explanatory variable coefficients remained consistent with the main analysis, indicating the robustness of the findings across journal contexts. To account for the time lag in citation accumulation, we conducted an additional analysis by excluding the most recent publications (those published in 2019 and 2020). Again, the main results were left unchanged.

Finally, to further validate our findings we conducted additional tests using alternative sources of citation data. We employed the total citations recorded on Google Scholar and the Plum Analytics usage score as alternatives to article citation and download data, respectively. The results of these analyses remained consistent with our main findings, confirming the reliability and stability of our results across different data sources.

Implications for service scholars

Our study contributes to the proliferation of qualitative methods in service research and answers the call for further diversity in qualitative service research (Baron et al., 2014; Witell et al., 2020) by elaborating on how qualitative methods are reported across different perspectives. Our findings have several specific implications for service scholars.

First, we present an inclusive view of what methodological reporting entails in qualitative research beyond methodological templates. We put forth an inventory of reporting practices applicable across different qualitative methodologies and epistemological positions, which hopefully will encourage service scholars to venture outside common methodological paths and templates (cf. Pratt et al., 2022). This inclusive view is also important given the extant diversity of qualitative methods used in service research (Benoit et al., 2017; Witell et al., 2020); an approach focused on a single methodology would only provide a limited understanding of crucial aspects of methodological reporting. Our view helps service scholars employing different methodologies to understand similarities in key areas of reporting and thus to build a common language and understanding between scholars using different qualitative methodologies as well as between qualitative and quantitative service scholars. Despite this, we emphasize that we do not advocate universal evaluative criteria for qualitative service research. Similar to Pratt et al. (2022), Tracy (2010) and Verleye (2019), we highlight the need to carefully match the reporting practices with the expectations of the relevant methodological perspective.

Second, we found that the level of methodological reporting expected from qualitative research has increased over the past two decades, and this trend is likely to continue. Service scholars should thus pay attention to methodological reporting to improve their chances of getting published. Our list of reporting practices can help service scholars to identify which areas of reporting they may need to improve.

Third, the level of methodological reporting varies between service journals. Scholars should carefully consider the journal they submit their qualitative research and ensure that it meets the expected level of reporting for that journal. This may include benchmarking against methodological reporting practices employed in articles previously published in the journal. However, given the rising standards of methodological reporting, we recommend service scholars to use the very latest qualitative research as benchmarks. Related, we identified several articles that demonstrated exemplary reporting of qualitative methods during our review. These are added as a web-based attachment as a reference for service scholars seeking to benchmark their reporting practices.

Lastly, while our findings indicate that the level of methodological reporting does not directly influence the impact of qualitative articles, higher-ranked journals tend to publish articles with more thorough methodological reporting. Since articles in these journals typically receive more citations, the level of reporting may indirectly influence the impact of a qualitative article.

Implications for reviewers and editors

Our study concerns the assessment of qualitative research and thus contributes to the methodological understanding of editors and reviewers. First, by providing an inclusive view of methodological reporting practices applicable across different qualitative methodologies, our study seeks to foster the variety and inclusiveness of service research with respect to qualitative methods. Our findings should help service scholars to evaluate qualitative research irrespective of their own background by providing an inventory of methodological reporting practices that are important for judging the rigor of qualitative research. This is important since assessing the rigor of qualitative research can be challenging due to the diversity of epistemologies and methodologies involved (Bansal et al., 2018). While the specific rigor criteria always depend on the specific methodology, the identified reporting practices provide a guideline on which methodological details are likely to matter.

Second, our review found that reporting on the data analysis process and ethical aspects of qualitative methodology are often lackluster. Editors may want to consider what are the standards that should be maintained regarding these two areas of reporting and whether they should be raised.

Third, we note that the number of pages in an article has a positive relationship with the extent of article methodological reporting. If service journal editors wish to encourage more thorough use of reporting practices, this suggests that special allowance could be provided for qualitative articles to ensure sufficient space for reporting methodology more extensively.

Limitations and future research

Although our inventory of reporting practices may seem like another methodological template for qualitative research, it is not intended as a universal list of criteria. As argued by methodological scholars (Verleye, 2019; Zilber and Zanoni, 2022), there are always viable alternative ways to present qualitative research that give varying weight to the specific types of reporting practices. This is also suggested by general accounts of qualitative methods (Pratt et al., 2022; Reay et al., 2019). Hence, the identified reporting practices should be used in conjunction with careful consideration of the context and purpose of a study, based on a solid understanding of the specific criteria applied within a specific methodological tradition (Jonsen et al., 2018; Pratt et al., 2022).

As noted above, the theoretical contributions and other contents of an article are likely to influence the impact of a qualitative article more than methodological reporting. Future research could thus seek to include an assessment of an article’s contribution and compare it with the impact of reporting practices, as well as explore the possible interaction between the two. Further research would also be needed to elaborate on how specific reporting practices are used for specific qualitative methodologies. Similar to Pratt (2008), future studies could also seek to survey and analyze the expectations of service journals and reviewers with respect to methodological reporting practices.

Given the time and resource limitations, we did not analyze the detailed rhetorical devices used in methodological reporting which may also affect the assessment of methodological rigor (cf. Golden-Biddle and Locke, 1993; Jonsen et al., 2018; Zilber and Zanoni, 2022). Our findings reflect the overall reporting practices rather than a specific style or techniques. Future studies could therefore conduct a detailed analysis of the use and impact of rhetorical strategies used in qualitative research methodological reporting.