3. tutorial Rigour in qualitative research PDF

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Promoting rigor of Charles study on teen girls with anorexia Rigor in research can be simply defined as the quality or the state of careful, strict precision, or the quality of being accurate and thorough. It has been always used to attribute qualities of a research process. Without rigour, a research become worthless, fiction and loses its quality[ CITATION Cyp17 \l 1033 ]. As the paradigms differ in qualitative and quantitative research, similarly the ways of evaluation also differ in both type of researches. Guba and Lincoln (1980), substituted validity and reliability with a parallel concept known as trustworthiness and in qualitative research, rigour or trustworthiness can be evaluated by 4 main components; Credibility, Transferability, Confirmability and Dependability[ CITATION Tro20 \l 1033 ]. 

Credibility can be defined as validity, or how credible or believable a study is.

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Transferability can be defined as the extent to which the data or results can be generalized or transferred to another study or context.

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Confirmability can be defined as the extent to which the study can be confirmed.

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Dependability can be defined as the consistency and reliability of results.

For the purpose of Charles study; i.e. to conduct semi-structured qualitative interviews with teenage girls about their anorexia, he can use certain strategies to promote the rigour of his study. 1. Charles can promote the ‘credibility’ of his study by:  Having the topic guide scrutinized by experts in the field, by his research supervisor, and by colleagues or peers Having a supervisor, colleague or a peer to review and question Charles hypothesis, collected data (through interview) and findings will help him ensure that only high-quality information is present in his data as in a lot of cases, these individuals act as a devil’s advocate, trying to find and highlight faults in a research. They can also suggest their own ideas on improving certain aspects of his research. Most of the time, this strategy is also called as ‘peer debriefing’.  Involve participants in checking the analyzed data Charles can send the raw data to the participants, for them to check it and make sure he has captured their responses correctly. Most of the time, participants add and clarify their previously given statements, which not only improves the rigour of his data but also provides him with new information. This strategy is Fathimath Saifa

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commonly known as ‘member check’. Charles can use member check as a continuous process throughout his data analysis procedure. Charles can also send the participants, some of the analyzed data and can ask for their input or can even ask them to analyze the data themselves, which can facilitate his work as well.  Recruiting participants and collecting data until data saturation is achieved. This strategy allows Charles to examine the cases of different anorexic girl in multiple angles to ensure that he has the best possible understanding of the topic. To do so, he can select anorexic girls form different places, or with different cultural backgrounds. This strategy can also be referred to as a method of triangulation. 2. Charles can promote the ‘transferability’ of his study by:  Standardizing the transcription process By using this strategy, Charles is allowing and collecting rich descriptions which can bring more objectivity to his study. This process of standardizing the transcription help him to directly quote the explanations from the participants and allows him to have a detailed description of the context and culture of the participants which can be later examined by the readers. Charles can also give any idea on how his study can be replicable, all the methods and procedures he used along with the application of his findings.

3. Charles can promote the ‘conformability’ of his study by:  Being reflexive by reflecting throughout the study using a contemporaneously recorded reflective diary Charles can ask the participants to keep a diary or can use their current diaries which they have been using, to cross check the responses which he gathered through the interview. This is one way of rechecking and conforming the data Charles has gathered.  Using an Audit trail Audit trail is the detailed description of steps involved from the beginning of the study to the findings. An Audit trail could consist of all the raw data, such as Charles notes during the semi-structured interview and the original audio clip of Fathimath Saifa

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the interview recording. He can also use all his codes and the definitions of some particular terms which he used, his memos and materials relating to his dispositions and intentions as a proof of analytic and interpretational process. It helps the peer reviewers or auditors trace the source if data, back to the original interpretations.

4. Charles can promote the ‘dependability’ of his study by:  Auditing Interview transcribed by a third party to confirm Accuracy This is the process of engaging a qualified third party for reviewing the entire process of his study and establish credibility. This will help Charles to seek validation of his work. The third-party can go through all the raw data Charles collected and compare them to his final interpretation in order to conform dependability of his data.

Fathimath Saifa

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