Review the handout entitled “Chapter 4: Trustworthiness of the Data.”

20191227205612the_sage_encyclopedia_of_educational_research_measurement_and_evaluation1.pdf

Home >Business & Finance homework help >Management homework help >Review the handout entitled “Chapter 4: Trustworthiness of the Data.”

Trustworthiness

In: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Educational Research,

Measurement, and Evaluation

By: Demetri L. Morgan & Sharon M. Ravitch

Edited by: Bruce B. Frey

Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation

Chapter Title: "Trustworthiness"

Pub. Date: 2018

Access Date: December 27, 2019

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.

City: Thousand Oaks,

Print ISBN: 9781506326153

Online ISBN: 9781506326139

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781506326139

Print pages: 1729-1731

This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods. Please note that the pagination of the

online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781506326139

The term trustworthiness refers to an overarching concept used in qualitative research to convey the

procedures researchers employ to ensure the quality, rigor, and credibility of a study while (re)establishing

congruence of the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of the researcher with the design,

implementation, and articulations of a research study. Hence, trustworthiness is both an aim and a practice.

The trustworthiness section of a study typically asserts why the findings and implications can be viewed as

acceptable and of worth to the reader by making the methodology and methods that undergird the study

transparent. Transparency in the approach, implementation, and evaluation of a study enables consumers

of the research to take important details into account when assessing the study’s value and utility. Thus,

trustworthiness is relevant to educational research, measurement, and evaluation because the related

procedures are a key task qualitative researchers must respond to in the execution of a research project.

Despite this, the role of trustworthiness in qualitative research is an unsettled paradigmatic debate because

of the concept’s overlap with the positivist notion of “validity,” the cornucopia of approaches involved

when seeking trustworthiness, and the lack of standardization on how to best judge the effectiveness of

trustworthiness across different fields and disciplines. This entry first overviews the epistemological and

ontological roots of trustworthiness and then describes common procedures for addressing trustworthiness

concerns.

Epistemological and Ontological Schism in Qualitative Research

Evaluating the quality of scientific research has largely been rooted in an implicit assumption that there is a

single “truth” or one reality that is experienced similarly by everyone. The purpose of the scientific process

then is to objectively observe, measure, and report the dimensions and properties of any given phenomenon.

This positivist worldview maintains that what the scientific method reveals in a given context or culture is

generalizable to other contexts and cultures because there is only one reality. Accordingly, quality research

in this paradigm is concerned with how valid and reliable the data, procedures, and analysis of a study are

in revealing this objective truth. Validity in this interpretation is concerned with how well a study meets the

established requirements of the scientific method, which have been agreed upon to be important steps in

uncovering observable realities. Reliability, on the other hand, conveys quality by ensuring that the outcomes

of a study are repeatable and replicable. To this day, this scientific viewpoint pervades the physical sciences;

however, in the late 1970s, anthropologists, sociologists, and qualitative educational researchers began to

question whether these assumptions and steps were proper approaches to research concerning multiple

truths or realities that were context-specific.

The questions from this early cadre of researchers grew into a chorus of critiques of the hidden and

embedded approaches to research in general and qualitative research in particular that emanated from the

positivist paradigm. The belief was that these approaches were complicit in marginalizing the experiences and

voices of cultures and peoples who did not have the resources, power, or space to assert their own narratives

into the cannon of formalized knowledge about human beings and the social world. This new wave of thinking

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critiqued the prevailing positivist paradigm, injecting the notion of multiple truths and realities into the scientific

method not only as an important and worthy endeavor but as an epistemological and ontological stance. In

agreement, some scholars informed by critical social theory believed that the quality of research should be

assessed by the political power it manifests for minoritized and oppressed peoples. Another subsection of

critical scholars dismissed the need for any criteria to judge the quality of research as reductionist and denying

the complexity that exists in the world. Still another group tried to reconcile these postpositivist critiques with

an explicit focus on subjectivity; broad and flexible criteria for the evaluation of quality research; and sensitivity

to histories, context, and the positionality of the researcher. The concept of trustworthiness emerged from

the thinking and writing of scholars in the third group as a way to effectively address the epistemological and

ontological concerns of research while attending to the issues of research quality.

In 1985, Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba are credited with establishing the first iteration of trustworthiness

in qualitative research. Their initial idea was concerned with evolving the four questions that evaluators and

consumers of research typically raise. Truth value, or how a researcher “can establish confidence in the truth

of the findings of a particular inquiry,” was refashioned as credibility. Applicability, or how a researcher “can

determine the extent to which the findings of a study have applicability in other contexts,” was reframed as

transferability. Consistency, or how a researcher can determine “whether the findings of a study would be

repeated if the study were replicated with similar [participants],” became dependability. Finally, the question

of neutrality, or how a researcher establishes “the degree to which the findings of a study are determined by

the [participants]” and not the “biases, motivations, interests, or perspectives” of the researcher, was adapted

as confirmability (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 290). Variations of credibility, transferability, dependability, and

confirmability have subsequently become the core tenants of trustworthiness.

Common Trustworthiness Strategies

Although there are numerous procedures that qualitative researchers can employ to address the various

tenets of trustworthiness, this section focuses on two of the more widely used strategies: triangulation

and participant validation (also known as member reflections, member validation, respondent validation,

verification, and member checks). Triangulation in qualitative research relates to trustworthiness because it is

concerned with using multiple indicators throughout a research project to convey the dependability, credibility,

and likely transferability of a study. The underlying philosophy of triangulation is to use multiple strategies

to cancel out the weaknesses of any one method. There are four common approaches to triangulation.

Researcher triangulation involves the engagement of multiple researchers in a study that brings together their

unique insights during the inquiry. Data triangulation includes seeking out two or more forms of data from

diverse sources to build more comprehensive interpretations of a phenomenon. Theory triangulation denotes

the need to approach a research study with various frameworks, sensitizing a researcher to the contexts

or dynamics that may be of relevance. Finally, methodological triangulation is typically seen as the use of

both qualitative and quantitative research approaches. However, qualitative researchers can also employ

methodological triangulation by pairing different qualitative methods together (e.g., grounded theory and case

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study).

Another prominent trustworthiness procedure related to credibility and confirmability is participant validation.

Seeking participant validation is the systematic process of engaging the study participants with the data,

findings, and/or analysis of a project both to ascertain if researchers accurately reflected their lived

experiences and to garner new data that may spur richer insights, a fuller understanding of context and how

it mediates experiences and events, and deeper analysis. Engaging in participant validation can occur at

any point in a research project; it is one critical way to deal with, account for, and make explicit data that

do not coincide with emergent themes or categories in a study. The systematic search for disconfirming

evidence or what some refer to as “outliers” and for contradictions through participant validation also adds to

the trustworthiness of a study.

Although there are myriad strategies available to a researcher seeking trustworthiness, it is vital to understand

and respond to the unique audiences and disciplinary expectations that also exert influence on how the quality

of research is judged. Consequently, while the criteria for seeking trustworthiness remain flexible, serious

attention and concern should be given in the research design, implementation, and articulation phases

of a research project to weave in strategies that address the credibility, transferability, dependability, and

confirmability of a study.

See also Ethical Issues in Educational Research; Member Check; Naturalistic Inquiry; Pilot Studies;

Qualitative Data Analysis; Qualitative Research Methods; Representativeness; Triangulation; Validity

Demetri L. Morgan & Sharon M. Ravitch

http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781506326139.n716

10.4135/9781506326139.n716