Questions: Qualitative Research Validity and Trustworthiness

Question 1

A qualitative researcher shares their thematic analysis with study participants, who confirm the themes accurately capture their experiences. This strategy primarily establishes:

• A. Dependability — it shows the research process was consistent
• B. Confirmability — it grounds findings in data rather than researcher bias
• C. Transferability — it shows findings apply to other contexts
• D. Credibility — it verifies that findings accurately represent participants' realities

Answer: (D)

Member checking — returning interpretations to participants for verification — is the primary strategy for establishing credibility (the qualitative analog of internal validity). Credibility asks: do the findings accurately represent participants' realities? Participants are the best judges of whether the researcher's account rings true. Dependability (Option A) concerns process consistency, established via audit trails. Confirmability (Option B) concerns grounding in data, established via reflexivity. Transferability (Option C) concerns applicability to other contexts, established via thick description.

Question 2

How does a qualitative researcher best establish transferability of their findings to other contexts?

• A. By using random sampling to ensure the sample statistically represents the target population
• B. By providing thick description of the setting, participants, and phenomena so readers can judge applicability themselves
• C. By replicating the study with multiple independent samples and comparing findings
• D. By calculating effect sizes and confidence intervals to estimate generalization

Answer: (B)

Transferability is not statistical generalization — qualitative studies don't claim to represent a population through sampling. Instead, the researcher provides thick description: rich, contextually detailed accounts that allow readers to judge whether findings might apply to their own situations. Options A, C, and D all describe quantitative generalization strategies. In qualitative logic, generalization is the reader's judgment, not the researcher's statistical claim; thick description provides the information needed to make that judgment.

Question 3

Reflexivity in qualitative research means systematically acknowledging and documenting how the researcher's background and assumptions influence the research, rather than attempting to eliminate that influence.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

Researcher influence in qualitative work is inevitable — the researcher is the instrument of data collection and analysis. Reflexivity doesn't pretend otherwise; it makes the subjective dimension visible and examinable. Strategies include reflexive memos, reflective journals, and audit trails documenting how the researcher's positionality shaped interpretive decisions. Attempting to eliminate researcher influence would be epistemologically naïve and would actually undermine trustworthiness by hiding rather than accounting for subjectivity.

Question 4

High dependability in qualitative research requires that two independent researchers studying the same phenomenon would produce identical findings.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Dependability (the qualitative analog of reliability) requires that the research process is consistent, traceable, and defensible — not that findings are replicable in the quantitative sense. Two researchers will legitimately produce different interpretations of the same phenomenon, reflecting different positionalities and interpretive lenses. What dependability demands is an audit trail — detailed documentation of data, analytic decisions, and methodological choices — so an external reviewer can evaluate whether the process was coherent, even if they would have analyzed it differently.

Question 5

Why do qualitative researchers use Lincoln and Guba's trustworthiness framework rather than simply applying quantitative validity and reliability criteria to their work?

Model answer: Quantitative criteria (internal validity, reliability, objectivity, external validity) assume goals that qualitative research doesn't share: elimination of researcher influence, statistical generalizability from samples to populations, and exact replication. Qualitative research instead aims for rich, contextualized understanding of particular phenomena, where the researcher's interpretive role is a feature, not a flaw. Lincoln and Guba's framework provides parallel criteria designed for qualitative logic: credibility (trustworthiness of interpretation), transferability (contextual applicability via thick description), dependability (transparent, auditable process), and confirmability (grounding in data through reflexivity).

The key insight is that quality criteria must fit the epistemological goals of the research. Applying quantitative benchmarks to qualitative work would penalize it for doing qualitative research correctly — the way evaluating a historian by their p-values would be a category error. Each trustworthiness criterion preserves a genuine rigor goal while replacing an inappropriate quantitative operationalization with one suited to qualitative inquiry.