Verification Strategies for Establishing Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Research

Abstract

The rejection of reliability and validity in qualitative inquiry in the 1980s has resulted in an interesting shift for “ensuring rigor” from the investigator's actions during the course of the research, to the reader or consumer of qualitative inquiry. The emphasis on strategies that are implemented during the research process has been replaced by strategies for evaluating trustworthiness and utility that are implemented once a study is completed. In this article, we argue that reliability and validity remain appropriate concepts for attaining rigor in qualitative research. We argue that qualitative researchers should reclaim responsibility for reliability and validity by implementing verification strategies integral and self-correcting during the conduct of inquiry itself. This ensures the attainment of rigor using strategies inherent within each qualitative design, and moves the responsibility for incorporating and maintaining reliability and validity from external reviewers' judgements to the investigators themselves. Finally, we make a plea for a return to terminology for ensuring rigor that is used by mainstream science.

A Culture in Transition: Paramedic Experiences with Community Referral Programs

“…6 This method of thematic saturation describes the point at which themes are fully accounted for, understood by, and agreed upon by the researchers, and where no new concepts or themes emerge from further interviews. 8 Data analysis was conducted manually by the researchers and began with open coding, which allows the codes to emerge from the data. These codes were then organized into categories to reveal patterns and themes.…”

“…Based on these recommendations, our analysis was conducted as interviews were completed, and rather than identifying a set number of interviews, we planned to use thematic saturation (i.e., the point at which no new information emerged from our interview data) as our end point. 6,8 Due to initial difficulties contacting participants, we modified our sampling strategy to include snowball sampling. 9 Contact with the initial group of key informants was achieved through existing contacts with paramedics from regional EMS.…”

The habitus of ‘rescue’ and its significance for implementation of rapid response systems in acute health care

“…The team [comprising x and 2 social scientists, x and x) iteratively reviewed the coding framework and emerging themes at team meetings. Once data collection was complete, emerging themes were presented to clinical staff, and academic audiences at conferences to test the validity of emerging interpretations (Morse et al, 2002).…”

Validation of a Swedish Version of the Cancer Dyspnea Scale

“…Lincoln and Guba (1985) suggest several techniques to fulfil the credibility criteria. Others have also written about techniques to enhance trustworthiness in qualitative studies (Leininger 1994;Morse et al 2002;Graneheim & Lundman 2004). Therefore, in Paper IV techniques used to enhance trustworthiness were chosen with care.…”

“…This was established by means of replicating the main procedures and questions in all interviews (Graneheim & Lundman 2004). The method also was coherent with the intent of the study to establish descriptions of experiences and management strategies of dyspnea (Morse et al 2002). Confirmability refers to the procedure to analyse trends and patterns in the analysis, when defining and revising the category scheme (Krippendorff 2004).…”