SRQR vs COREQ vs ENTREQ: Choosing the Right Qualitative Reporting Standard (2026)

Published August 20, 2024  |  Last updated October 29, 2026

Qualitative research reporting standards ensure that study methods are described with enough transparency for readers to assess credibility, transferability, and methodological rigour. Three checklists dominate the field: SRQR, COREQ, and ENTREQ. Each serves a different purpose. Selecting the wrong one — or applying none — is a common cause of desk rejection in qualitative health and social science journals.

This guide explains what each standard covers, how its items are organised, when to use it, and how to complete it during manuscript preparation. It also shows, with data from 147 published studies, which items authors miss most often.

SRQR, COREQ, and ENTREQ: Comparison at a Glance

Table 1. The three qualitative reporting standards side by side, from their development papers.^1,2,3

How to Choose Between SRQR, COREQ, and ENTREQ

The decision hinges on two variables: what kind of data you collected, and whether your study is primary research or synthesis work.

Use SRQR when your study is a primary qualitative investigation using any method — grounded theory, thematic analysis, phenomenological inquiry, narrative research, ethnography, case study analysis, or content analysis. SRQR was designed to apply broadly across qualitative traditions, making it the appropriate default for studies that do not fall neatly into the COREQ or ENTREQ categories. It is especially common in education, social sciences, psychology, and health professions education, where the 32-item COREQ is considered too narrowly focused on the interview modality.

Use COREQ when your primary data come from in-depth interviews or focus groups, and your research context is health, clinical, or biomedical science. COREQ was built for these study types: its authors compiled 76 items from 22 existing checklists and reduced them to 32. Its three domains — research team and reflexivity; study design; analysis and findings — map directly onto the methods sections that peer reviewers in health journals expect to see.

Use ENTREQ when you are not conducting original data collection but synthesising qualitative findings from multiple existing studies. Qualitative evidence synthesis, meta-ethnography, thematic synthesis, and framework synthesis all fall under the ENTREQ umbrella. If your study follows PRISMA 2020 for the search and screening phases, ENTREQ should be used alongside PRISMA to cover the synthesis methodology and findings integration components that PRISMA does not address.

Understanding SRQR: Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research

SRQR was published in 2014 by O’Brien and colleagues in Academic Medicine, following a synthesis of recommendations from existing qualitative reporting guidelines across multiple disciplines. The goal was to create a single comprehensive framework applicable to the full diversity of qualitative methods rather than restricting guidance to one paradigm or data type.

The 21 SRQR items span the complete research arc: from problem formulation and design rationale through researcher positionality and sampling, to data collection procedures, analysis approach, findings presentation, interpretation, and dissemination. SRQR asks for the qualitative approach and research paradigm (item 5) and for researcher characteristics and reflexivity (item 6), which matter most in phenomenological, constructivist, and interpretivist research traditions.

The items most often left out are the ones that make qualitative work credible: researcher characteristics and reflexivity (item 6), the qualitative approach and paradigm (item 5), and techniques to enhance trustworthiness such as member checking or an audit trail (item 15). The data section below shows how often each is missed in published studies. Completing the checklist while you draft the methods, rather than after, avoids going back to raw data at the revision stage.

Understanding COREQ: Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research

COREQ was published in 2007 by Tong and colleagues in the International Journal for Quality in Health Care.² The authors searched for existing checklists used to assess qualitative studies, compiled 76 items from 22 of them, and removed duplicate, ambiguous and impractical items to reach 32. The items sit in three domains.

Domain 1, research team and reflexivity (items 1–8), asks who did the interviews or ran the focus groups, their credentials, occupation, gender, experience and training, and what relationship they had with participants before the study. Interviewer positionality shapes what participants say, so reviewers read this domain closely.

Domain 2, study design (items 9–23), covers the methodological orientation and theory (item 9), how participants were selected, approached and how many took part (items 10–13), the setting (items 14–16), and data collection: the interview guide, repeat interviews, audio or visual recording, field notes, interview duration, data saturation, and whether transcripts were returned to participants (items 17–23).

Domain 3, analysis and findings (items 24–32), covers the number of data coders, the coding tree, how themes were derived, software, and participant checking of findings (item 28), then reporting: quotations, consistency between data and findings, and clarity of major and minor themes (items 29–32). Journals that require COREQ usually ask for the completed checklist as a supplementary table listing each item and the page where it is addressed.

Understanding ENTREQ: Enhancing Transparency in Reporting the Synthesis of Qualitative Research

ENTREQ was published in 2012 by Tong and colleagues in BMC Medical Research Methodology.³ Its 21 items were generated from guidance on synthesising qualitative health research and piloted against 40 published syntheses. They fall into five domains: introduction, methods and methodology, literature search and selection, appraisal, and synthesis of findings.

The first two items set out the research question (item 1) and name the synthesis methodology with its rationale (item 2): meta-ethnography, thematic synthesis, critical interpretive synthesis, grounded theory synthesis, realist synthesis, meta-aggregation, meta-study or framework synthesis. Items 3 to 9 cover the search: whether it was pre-planned or iterative, inclusion criteria, data sources, the electronic search strategy, screening methods, study characteristics and selection results.

Items 10 to 13 cover appraisal: the rationale, the tool used (ENTREQ itself names CASP, QARI and COREQ as examples), whether more than one reviewer appraised independently, and whether any study was weighted or excluded on quality. Items 14 to 21 cover synthesis: what was extracted, software, who coded, the coding process, how studies were compared, whether themes were derived inductively or deductively, quotations, and a synthesis output that goes beyond summarising the primary studies.

SRQR vs COREQ: Key Differences for Decision-Making

Table 2. SRQR and COREQ compared on the points reviewers check most, with item numbers from each checklist.

Implementing the Checklist: Best Practices for Submission

The most effective approach to checklist compliance is to complete the relevant checklist alongside writing the first draft rather than retrospectively. Retrospective completion frequently reveals gaps that require returning to raw data or expanding a compressed methods section — neither of which is feasible when a submission deadline is imminent.

For SRQR and COREQ, a two-column supplementary table is the standard submission format: the first column lists each item number and item text, the second column provides the page number and section heading where the item is addressed. Reviewers verify compliance using this table without searching the manuscript body. Items that are genuinely not applicable — for example, field notes for a telephone interview study — should be listed as N/A with a one-sentence explanation rather than omitted entirely.

For ENTREQ, the same table approach applies, but authors should additionally describe the synthesis methodology in sufficient detail for replication — naming the specific synthesis approach (meta-ethnography following Noblit and Hare; thematic synthesis following Thomas and Harden; or framework synthesis), citing the foundational method paper, and describing how decisions about theme development and interpretive inference were made and documented across the team. A vague reference to “thematic analysis” or “qualitative synthesis” without the named approach does not meet ENTREQ item 2.

Which Items Authors Miss: SRQR Checked Against 147 Published Studies

A 2026 PLOS ONE study scored 147 qualitative health studies published from 2022 to 2025 against all 21 SRQR items, marking each item as reported, partly reported or not reported.⁴ The authors posted their item-level dataset under a CC BY 4.0 licence, so we recounted every item in R. Our recount agrees with the paper to within one study on each item.

The front and back of the paper are fine. The abstract (97%), the purpose or research question (96%) and the findings (95%) were almost always reported in full.

The qualitative core is where papers fall short. Only 37% fully described the researchers’ characteristics and reflexivity (item 6), and more than half said nothing about it at all. Under half named the qualitative approach and paradigm (item 5, 49%), and 54% described techniques to enhance trustworthiness such as member checking or an audit trail (item 15). Only 32% of titles signalled that the study was qualitative (item 1). These are the items reviewers of qualitative work look for first.

Language of publication made a large difference. Taking the paper’s cut-off for adequate reporting (a total of 37 or more out of 42), 46 of 84 papers published in English reached it, against 4 of 63 in Spanish: a prevalence ratio of 0.12 (95% CI 0.04 to 0.31) in our recount, and 0.12 (0.05 to 0.32) in the paper. The largest single gap was reflexivity: fully reported in 59.5% of English-language papers and 7.9% of Spanish-language ones.

Do Journals Require These Checklists, and Do They Work?

Requirements vary by journal, so the instructions for authors are always the deciding source. The EQUATOR Network library lists all three guidelines and links to their development papers. Two recent studies show how uneven endorsement and uptake still are.

Endorsement is often missing. A 2026 survey of 29 Chinese nursing journals found that only 2 (6.9%) mentioned COREQ or SRQR in their instructions for authors. Of 24 editors surveyed, 11 knew of COREQ and 8 knew of SRQR, and none required either checklist at submission, editing or peer review.⁶

Uptake is modest, but reporting has improved. A meta-review of 1,695 qualitative reviews published from 2007 to 2019 found that 28% used ENTREQ and 17% used COREQ.⁵ Across 2,775 COREQ appraisals of primary studies, the mean COREQ score rose from 15.15 before the checklist was published to 17.74 after it, and 13 of the 32 items improved. Not every item moved, as Figure 2 shows.

What the markers in Figure 2 show.

1. 1Software rose the most. Reporting of analysis software went from 0.28 to 0.45, one of the largest gains, alongside the number of data coders (0.49 to 0.66).
2. 2Participant checking did not move. Item 28 scored 0.19 before and 0.19 after COREQ (p = 0.752). It is the item most worth adding to your own methods section, because so few papers report it.
3. 3The total improved. In this complete-case table the mean total rose from 15.51 to 17.74 out of 32 (p < 0.001); the abstract reports 15.15 across all appraisals.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between SRQR and COREQ?

SRQR (21 items) covers any qualitative method in any discipline, from title to funding. COREQ (32 items) is built for interview and focus group studies and goes deeper on the research team, data collection and analysis. Use COREQ for health interview and focus group studies when the journal expects it; use SRQR for other qualitative designs or when the journal names it.

When should I use ENTREQ instead of COREQ or SRQR?

Use ENTREQ when you synthesise findings from several existing qualitative studies, for example in a meta-ethnography, thematic synthesis or qualitative evidence synthesis. COREQ and SRQR are for primary studies that collect original data.

Does ENTREQ replace PRISMA 2020 for qualitative systematic reviews?

No. PRISMA 2020 covers searching, screening and selection; ENTREQ covers the synthesis methodology, appraisal and how findings were combined. A qualitative systematic review usually reports both.

How many items does each qualitative reporting checklist have?

SRQR has 21 items. COREQ has 32 items in three domains: research team and reflexivity (items 1 to 8), study design (9 to 23) and analysis and findings (24 to 32). ENTREQ has 21 items in five domains: introduction, methods and methodology, literature search and selection, appraisal, and synthesis of findings.

Are all 32 COREQ items mandatory?

Journals that require COREQ expect every item to be addressed or marked not applicable with a short reason, usually in a supplementary table that gives the page for each item. Unexplained gaps often lead to queries from the editorial office before peer review.

My study uses interviews and a survey. Which checklist applies?

Report the qualitative arm with COREQ or SRQR and the quantitative arm with its own guideline, such as STROBE for an observational survey. For the integration of the two, the GRAMMS guideline (Good Reporting of A Mixed Methods Study) from O’Cathain and colleagues is the usual reference.

Which SRQR items are most often missing?

In a 2026 audit of 147 qualitative health studies, the least reported items were the title signalling a qualitative study (32% fully reported), researcher characteristics and reflexivity (37%), the qualitative approach and paradigm (49%) and techniques to enhance trustworthiness (54%).

Did COREQ improve the reporting of qualitative research?

A meta-review of 1,695 qualitative reviews found that the mean COREQ score of primary studies rose from 15.15 to 17.74 out of 32 after COREQ was published, with 13 of 32 items improving. Participant checking (item 28) did not improve, and only 17% of reviews used COREQ.

References

1. O’Brien BC, Harris IB, Beckman TJ, Reed DA, Cook DA. Standards for reporting qualitative research: a synthesis of recommendations. Acad Med. 2014;89(9):1245–1251. doi:10.1097/ACM.0000000000000388
2. Tong A, Sainsbury P, Craig J. Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ): a 32-item checklist for interviews and focus groups. Int J Qual Health Care. 2007;19(6):349–357. doi:10.1093/intqhc/mzm042
3. Tong A, Flemming K, McInnes E, Oliver S, Craig J. Enhancing transparency in reporting the synthesis of qualitative research: ENTREQ. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2012;12:181. doi:10.1186/1471-2288-12-181
4. de Jong Y, van der Willik EM, Milders J, Voorend CGN, Morton RL, Dekker FW, et al. A meta-review demonstrates improved reporting quality of qualitative reviews following the publication of COREQ- and ENTREQ-checklists, regardless of modest uptake. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2021;21:184. doi:10.1186/s12874-021-01363-1. Open access, CC BY 4.0.
5. Rojas-Miliano C, Dámaso-Román A, Almeida-Huanca G, Mayo-Puchoc N, Viguria-Chavez Y, Sánchez-Villena AR, et al. Reporting quality of qualitative health studies published by Peruvian authors: A scoping review. PLoS One. 2026;21(6):e0351494. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0351494. Open access, CC BY 4.0.
6. Zhao L, Zeng J, Hu K, Ma B. Endorsement of the 32-item Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative (COREQ) and Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR) by Chinese journals of nursing: A survey of editors and review of journal instructions for authors. PLoS One. 2026;21(4):e0346938. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0346938. Open access, CC BY 4.0.
7. O’Cathain A, Murphy E, Nicholl J. The quality of mixed methods studies in health services research. J Health Serv Res Policy. 2008;13(2):92–98. doi:10.1258/jhsrp.2007.007074

Editverse Research Team | Updated October 2026