Credibility and Qualitative Research

Credibility in qualitative research is trustworthiness. A researcher can make his or her study more credible by utilizing different resources to gain information. Such as, interviews, surveys, and questionnaires. A problem with credibility in qualitative research has been to treat qualitative research as a unified field. After all of the data is collected the researcher might be prone to make a generalization or blanket statement about their results. For example, if a researcher was doing a study about the Black student perception of the alternative school curriculum. After collecting the data the researcher concluded that the Black students in the particular school hated the curriculum, the researcher could make a generalization by stating that all Black students hate the alternative school curriculum.

Another issue with credibility in qualitative research involves replication. If another researcher wanted to perform the same exact study, with the same participants, will the study be duplicated? This is a problem because the results can be very subjective. For example, if another researcher wanted to conduct the same exact study on Black students in alternative schools their results might be different. The sample group would be different and the researcher´s own bias or prior experiences might come into play when the data is evaluated.

When does qualitative research become interpretative or critical? And, logically, when does critical research become overpowering? These questions draw attention to some of the tensions in doing quality qualitative research, that which has policy applications as against a loyalty to post-modern and critical approaches. Researchers often are confronted with the need to compromise between process and end-outcome of the work they do, and in doing so, reframe empowerment from within the interests of their institutions or own personal biases.