trustworthiness and credibility in qualitative research pdf

Trustworthiness and Credibility in Qualitative Research: A Comparative Analysis

In recent years, the importance of trustworthiness and credibility in qualitative research has gained significant attention within various fields, including linguistics, behavioral sciences, and social sciences. The construction of a corpus, a technique borrowed from linguistics, offers an alternative approach to statistical sampling techniques, providing high-quality empirical research results.

This paper aims to discuss methodological concepts for evaluating qualitative research by focusing on techniques for purposefully selecting data for analysis. While criteria for evaluating qualitative research are equally important, they have not received equal attention in the literature. Researchers need to adopt a connoisseur-like approach to pass judgment on different kinds of studies in a fair and ethical manner.

The increasing acceptance of qualitative research within the Information Systems (IS) community has led to a shift in methodological discourse towards questions concerning the quality of qualitative research, with a focus on developing guidelines for good practice. This paper argues that criteria should be viewed as lists of characterizing traits open to reinterpretation as times, conditions, and purposes change.

To illustrate this point, we construct two ideal types of researchers: a criteriologist and a relativist. These ideal types demonstrate how each might judge qualitative studies of different kinds, highlighting the constraining nature of criteria-based evaluation and the expansive possibilities of relativistic approaches.

In the context of sport and exercise sciences, it is essential to reflect on this issue with a view to generating further dialogue and a greater understanding of differences within the research community. The competing claims surrounding the use of criteria to pass judgment on qualitative research lead to a situation where there are multiple perspectives on what constitutes good-quality work.

This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion about trustworthiness and credibility in qualitative research, highlighting the need for researchers to adopt a nuanced approach that acknowledges the complexity of evaluating qualitative studies. By exploring the tensions between criteriologist and relativist approaches, we hope to stimulate further debate and inform best practices for conducting high-quality qualitative research.

Trustworthiness and credibility in qualitative research pdf