Summary Qualitative Part - Introduction to political science research (IY)

CRITERIA IN SOCIAL RESEARCH

Reliability
Reliability is concerned with the question of whether the results of a study are repeatable.
• Reliability is particularly concerned with quantitative research
• The quantitative researcher is likely to be concerned with the question of whether a measure is
stable or not


Replication
Replication is concerned with the question of whether the results of a study are replicable
• The researcher needs to spell out his or her procedures in great detail
• Replication is quite rare (due to low status of replication in academia)


Validity
Validity is concerned with the integrity of the conclusions that are generated from a piece of research


Measurement validity (in Bryman, also called construct validity; in the slides and book, also
called content validity)
Measurement validity is concerned with the question of whether a measure that is devised of a concept
really does reflect the concept that it is supposed to be denoting
• It is applied primarily to quantitative research and to the research for measure of social scientific
concepts
• Do the measures really represent the concepts they are supposed to be tapping?
• Measurement validity is related to reliability: the assessment of measurement validity
presupposes that a measure is reliable à if a measure is unreliable, it cannot be valid


Internal validity
Internal validity is concerned with the question of whether a conclusion that incorporates a causal
relationship between two or more variables holds water
• It relates mainly to the issue of causality
• If we suggest that x causes y, can we be sure that it is x that is responsible for variation in y and
not something else that is producing an apparent causal relationship?
• Independent variable: the factor that has a causal impact
• Dependent variable: the effect

, External validity
External validity is concerned with the question of whether the results of a study can be generalized
beyond the specific research context
• The way people are selected to participate in research is crucial
• This is why quantitative researcher are so keen to generate representative samples


Ecological validity
Ecological validity is concerned with the question of whether social scientific findings are applicable
to people’s everyday, natural social settings
• This criterion is concerned with the question of whether social research sometimes produces
findings that may be technically valid but have little to do with what happens in people’s everyday
lives
• If research findings are ecologically invalid, they are in a sense artefacts of the social scientist’s
arsenal of data collection and analytic tools


Research with research strategy
Lincoln and Guba propose alternative terms and ways of assessing qualitative research.
For example, they propose trustworthiness as a criterion of how good a qualitative study is.


Each aspect of trustworthiness has a parallel with the quantitative research criteria:
• Credibility, which parallels internal validity
o How believable are the findings?
• Transferability, which parallels external validity
o Do the findings apply to other contexts?
• Dependability, which parallels reliability
o Are the findings likely to apply at other times?
• Confirmability, which parallels objectivity
o Has the investigator allowed his or her values to intrude to a higher degree?