Context: Research quality is intended to appraise the design and reporting of studies. It comprises a set of concepts such as methodological rigor, practical relevance, and conformance to ethical standards. Depending on the perspective, different views of importance are given to the conceptual dimensions of research quality.

Objective: We intend to assess the level of alignment between researchers with regard to a conceptual model of research quality. This includes aligning the definition of research quality and reasoning on the relative importance of quality characteristics.

Method: We conducted a mixed-methods approach with two distinct group perspectives: (i) a research group; and (ii) the empirical software engineering research community. Our data collection approach comprised a questionnaire survey and a complementary focus group. We carried out a hierarchical voting prioritization to collect relative values for importance.

Results: In the context of this research, ‘internally valid’, ‘relevant research idea’, and ‘applicable results’ are perceived as the core dimensions of quality. The alignment at the research group level was higher compared to that at the community level.

Conclusion: The interdisciplinary model of research quality was seen to express fairly the quality of research in the software engineering context. It presented limitations regarding its structure and components' description, which resulted in an updated model.