Research on evaluation has mapped the landscape of quantitative evaluation methods. There are far fewer overviews of the practice of qualitative evaluation methods. We present a metastudy of scholarly articles from five widely read evaluation research journals, examining the types of methods used and the transparency of their quality criteria. Our sample includes 50 out of about 1070 articles. First, we document a remarkable variety of qualitative methods, but some stand out: Case studies and stakeholder analysis, often combined with interview techniques. Articles rarely define and conceptualise their methods explicitly. This is understandable from a practical point of view, but it can make it difficult to critically interrogate findings and build knowledge. Finally, we find that the transparency of qualitative criteria required in the literature is not always sufficient, which can hinder the synthesis of results.