validity and reliability in qualitative research

Counting in qualitative research: Why to conduct it, when to avoid it, and when to closet it. Each type of counting techniques is applicable to specific research setting and largely dependent on the research design.

Typically, there are four types of counting, which are – autonomous, supplementary, corroborative, and credentialing. In a frequency table, the qualitative findings are summarised in a compact form by displaying a series of scores in ascending or descending order, together with their frequencies – the number of times each score occurs in the respective data set. Frequency is a measure of the number of occurrences of a particular score in a given set of data. Though alternative perspectives can be used by researchers who counter any kind of counting or the use of numbers, frequency counting is quite popular in qualitative research. As such, there are various approaches adopted by qualitative researchers to ensure the ‘trustworthiness’ of the findings.įrequency counting is considered as one of the widely used approaches by qualitative researchers to ensure the trustworthiness of qualitative findings.

Besides, there are personal biases of the researchers which also can impact on what is viewed as credible in qualitative research. It is believed that different audiences will have different beliefs about what constitutes good qualitative research. This idea, however, is criticised for having a fundamental drawback known as multiple audience problem. Moreover, in qualitative research, the researcher is considered as the instrument and the reliability and validity of the research to a large extent dependent on the researcher’s own ability to immerse into the research.

Although reliability and validity are treated separately in quantitative studies, these terms are not viewed separately in qualitative research. This is known as the reliability and validity of the research. In qualitative research, usually the credibility is manifested by the statistical robustness within the instrument of data collection. Whether qualitative or quantitative, it is important that researchers are able to test and demonstrate the credibility or trustworthiness. Quantitative researchers seek causal determination, prediction, and generalisation of the relevant research findings, whereas, qualitative researchers seek illumination, understanding, and extrapolation which is based on their immersed viewpoint. Qualitative research uses a more naturalistic and human-centered approach that seeks to understand phenomena in context-specific settings rather than generalised facts based on scientific experiment.

One of the common criticism which qualitative researchers frequently face is methodological rigor.

Validity and reliability in qualitative research