Teaching Quality in Qual Research
Nollaig Frost & Alasdair Gordon-Finlayson
Improving Quality
• Common strategies taught to students to improve the ‘quality’
of their own research:
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Triangulation
Trustworthiness
Reflexivity
Quality checklists
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Strategies 1: Triangulation
• Between-method triangulation
• Methodological triangulation
• Within-method triangulation
• Data triangulation
• Investigator triangulation
• Theory triangulation
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Strategies 2: Trustworthiness I
• Lincoln & Guba (1985) identified four components of
‘trustworthiness’:
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Credibility
Transferability
Dependability
Confirmability
• “This paradigm, while disavowing… postpositivism, sustains, at
one level, Strauss & Corbin’s commitment to the canons of
good science” (Guba & Lincoln 1998, p.331)
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Strategies 2: Trustworthiness II
• AGF’s summary of two components:
1. Authority
• Reader will trust writer’s expertise as researcher
• E.g. Methods section showing competent grasp of methodology, correct
references, etc.
2. Transparency
• Reader guided through analysis
• Writer manages to write reflexively
• Easier to present as two discrete jobs to students
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Strategies 3: Reflexivity
• Tindall (1994) usefully differentiates between:
• Personal reflexivity:
• Revealing, rather than concealing, our level of personal
involvement and engagement
• Reflexivity allows us critical subjectivity helping to ensure that
our findings do not stem from unexamined prejudice
• Functional reflexivity:
• Critical examination of the research process itself
• Monitoring our role as researchers and our impact on the research
process
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Strategies 4: Quality checklists
• Three examples of quality checklists:
• Henwood & Pidgeon (1992)
Qualitative research and psychological theorizing
• Elliott, Fischer, & Rennie (1999)
Evolving guidelines for publication of qualitative research studies in
psychology and related fields
• Madill, Jordan & Shirley (2000)
Objectivity and reliability in qualitative analysis: Realist, contextualist and
radical constructive epistemologies
• See final slide for references
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Teaching ‘Quality’: Challenges
• Helping students to move beyond paying lip service to
incorporating quality into practice
• Recognising the place and role of positivist research teaching
and learning
• Helping students to develop and stick to an appropriate
timescale for conducting high quality qualitative research
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Helping student to recognise their role as researcher in
enhancing the quality throughout the research process
• Helping students to find a writing style appropriate to a
qualitative research culture
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Writing-Up
• What is expected of the write up? Why are you asking
students to do it? …
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Shows decisions made,
The data,
The people involved, the stories they tell …
Invites the reader to become involved in the process
• Often written in the 1st person
• Writing up is part of the qualitative research process…
because the student chooses what to write and how to write it
• Therefore REFLEXIVITY becomes an important quality criteria
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Writing up to include Reflexivity
• Aims to show:
• Conscious and unconscious impacts on the study of the topic
• Researcher engagement with the research and its context
• Is an opportunity for researcher to reflect on the topic and
their study of the topic
• Writing process as opportunity to reflect on what is being
written about
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‘Openness’ in writing up
• See Chenail (1995)
• Mixing reflexivity, description and detail by considering both
the study and the topic under study
• Creating a space to acknowledge the development of the
method and its application, and the impact of the researcher
• Considering the ‘other’ : the reader, the participants,
colleagues, peers, supervisors etc who have taken part
• If the reader trusts the writer the work will be considered
trustworthy!
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References
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Chenail, R.J. (1995) Presenting Qualitative Data, The Qualitative Report, 2(3)
http://www.nova.edu.ssss/QR/QR2-3/presenting.html
Elliott, R., Fischer, C.T. & Rennie, D.L. (1999). Evolving guidelines for publication of
qualitative research studies in psychology and related fields. British Journal of Clinical
Psychology, 38 (3), pp. 215-229.
Elliott, R., Fischer, C.T. & Rennie, D.L. (2000). Also against methodolatry: A reply to Reicher.
British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 39 (1), pp. 7-10.
Henwood, K.L. & Pidgeon, N.F. (1992). Qualitative research and psychological theorizing.
British Journal of Psychology, 83 (1), 97-112.
Lincoln, Y.S. & Guba, E.G. (1985). Naturalistic Inquiry. London: Sage Publications.
Madill, A., Jordan, A. & Shirley, C. (2000). Objectivity and reliability in qualitative analysis:
Realist, contextualist and radical constructive epistemologies. British Journal of Psychology,
91 (1), pp. 1-20.
Reicher, S. (2000). Against methodolatry: Some comments on Elliott, Fischer, and Rennie.
British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 39 (1), pp. 1-6
Tindall, C. (1994). Issues of evaluation. In Banister, P., Burman, E., Parker, I., Taylor, M. &
Tindall, C. Qualitative Methods in Psychology: A Research Guide (Chapter 9). Maidenhead:
OUP.
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Any questions?
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Strategies 4: Henwood & Pidgeon
• The importance of fit
• The themes or analytical categories offered by the researcher should
fit the data
• Integration of theory
• The degree to which findings can be integrated or generalised at
different levels of abstraction
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Reflexivity
Documentation
Theoretical sampling and negative case analysis
Sensitivity to negotiated realities
• The researcher needs to demonstrate awareness of the research
context, power differentials and participant reactions
• Transferability
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Strategies 4: Eliott, Fischer & Rennie
• Guidelines for journal editors…
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Owning one’s perspective
Situating the sample
Grounding in examples
Providing credibility checks
Coherence
Accomplishing general vs. specific research tasks
Resonating with readers
• See also response by Reicher (2000) and E, F & R’s rejoinder
(2000), in same journal… “teach the controversy”?!
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Strategies 4: Madill, Jordan & Shirley
• Realist analysis
• Reliability, consistency – production of results that are not “wildly
idiosyncratic”!
• Contextual constructivist analysis
• Triangulation to ‘flesh out’ rather than confirm; Reflection on
subjectivity
• Radical constructionism
• Truth/falsity issues and ideas of reliability all set aside; writer needs
to convince the reader of the internal coherence of her analysis
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