Evaluating Qualitative Research INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods 16 April 2009 Evaluating Qualitative Research

Typical Reactions is not generalizable / is “anecdotal” The sample is too small to say anything / is not a random sample / not representative What is the hypothesis you are testing? Great stories, but can you show me some data that supports your claims? is subjective, the researcher’s presence in the setting biases the data lacks rigor, procedure is unsystematic

Becker – epistemology of qual research Quantitative Tradition Qualitative Tradition Reliability – reproducing the findings through the same procedures, same findings from multiple observers Accuracy – based on close observation not remote indicators Validity – the degree to which one measured the phenomenon one claims to be dealing with Precision – close to the thing discussed Breadth – knowledge of a broad range of matters that touch on the topic

Criteria for Quant Research The “Holy Trinity” Reliability Validity Representativeness and Generalizability Internal External Content Criterion Construct

Functional Equivalence Criteria for evaluating quantitative research is not directly applicable to qualitative research Can we draw out some abstract, general standards and then respecify for qualitative research Kvale on epistemology Abandoning a correspondence theory of truth Defensible (rather than absolute) knowledge claims requiring argumentation

Functional Equivalence Quantitative Tradition Qualitative Tradition Reliability of measures (c) Confidence (c) Relevance (r) Triangulation and reflexivity (c) Internal validity (c) Transparency and procedural clarity (c) Sample size (c) Corpus construction (c, r) Representative sampling (r) Thick description (c, r) External validity (r) Local surprise (r) Validity of measures (r) Communicative validation (r)

Triangulation and Reflexivity (c) In situ verification process i.e. interviews about Internet use supplemented by observation

Transparency (c)

Corpus Construction (c, r) Maximizing the diversity of unknown representations and mapping those representations Representativeness and ‘external validity’ is a matter of argumentation

Thick Description (c, r) ‘high-fidelity’ reportage: verbatim quotes – demonstrating the provenance of a claim Footnotes and sources But also, do you get a whole picture of the social world, its elements, and how they are interlinked? Especially the meaning of the social phenomenon.

Local Surprise (r) Surprise in relation to a common-sense view Surprise in relation to theoretical expectation Solely confirming evidence (just as totally consistent evidence) should raise suspicion

Communicative Validation (r) Gaining feedback from research participants (and others?) Remember interviewing technique of ‘interpreting’ on the fly to get confirmation from interviewees

The Future of Evaluation Websites and digital archives that make qualitative data accessible to the public

Summary Make your methods visible Make your data (ideally) available Continual verification in situ (as part of your iterative process) Closeness to the social phenomenon and openness to surprises, the counter-intuitive Re-read Becker on the “epistemology of qualitative research” for further suggestions