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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?

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Evaluating Qualitative Research

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

  2. 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

  3. Becker – epistemology of qual research

  4. Criteria for Quant Research

  5. 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

  6. Functional Equivalence

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

  8. Transparency (c)

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

  10. 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.

  11. 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

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

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

  14. 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

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