QUALITY AND THE IDEA OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Validity, trustworthiness and rigour: quality and the idea of qualitative research



Quality and the Idea of Qualitative Research

Introduction

The issue of quality in qualitative research has troubled nursing for at least a quarter of a century. As Sandelowski and Barroso (2002) have recently observed: Scholars across the practice and social science disciplines have sought to define what a good, valid, and/or trustworthy qualitative study is, to chart the history of and to categorize efforts to accomplish such a definition, and to describe and codify techniques for both ensuring and recognizing good studies. (p. 2) However, they concluded that 'after all this effort, we seem to be no closer to establishing a consensus on quality criteria, or even on whether it is appropriate to try to establish such a consensus' (p. 2).

Validity, trustworthiness and rigour: quality and the idea of qualitative research

Morse et al. (2002), starting from a diametrically opposed position, arrived at essentially the same conclusion when they wrote 'the literature on validity has become muddled to the point of making it unrecognisable' (p. 4). I will argue in this paper that any attempt to establish a consensus on quality criteria for qualitative research is unlikely to succeed for the simple reason that there is no unified body of theory, methodology or method that can collectively be described as qualitative research; indeed, that the very idea of qualitative research is open to question. For some writers, the credibility of nursing as a science depends on qualitative studies adopting the concepts and terminology of positivist research (Field & Morse 1985, Morse et al. 2002), such that 'there is nothing to be gained from the use of alternative terms which, on analysis, often prove to be identical to the traditional terms of reliability and validity' (Long & Johnson 2000, p. 30). For Morse et al., validity and reliability are achieved when the researcher rigorously follows a number of verification strategies in the course of the research process:

Together, all these verification strategies incrementally and interactively contribute to and build reliability and validity, thus ensuring rigor. Thus, the rigor of qualitative inquiry should be beyond question, beyond challenge, and provide pragmatic scientific evidence that must be integrated into our developing knowledge base. (Morse et al. 2002, p. 13, my emphasis) This statement of intent exemplifies very strongly the aspiration of some qualitative researchers to the values, approaches, terminology, and hence, to the certainties of the 'hard' sciences. Rigour is clearly the key to success; if the verification strategies outlined by Morse et al. are followed in a rigorous fashion, the result will be scientific evidence that must be integrated into our knowledge base. Furthermore, they emphasize that the responsibility for ensuring rigour lies solely with the researchers themselves rather than with the readers of the research report. Whilst Morse et al. see this as the dominant view of rigour in Europe, they bemoan the fact that the majority of writers in North America adopt a rather different ...