Enhance Reliability in Qualitative Research Design by Making Explicit Six Aspects:

1. Researcher's Role:

a. Preferable to be an "outsider" without special status

b. Preferable to have past experiences that enable empathy with the observed processes or participants meanings

2. Informant Selection:

Carefully describe the informants and the decision process used in the selection

3. Social Contexts:

Carefully describe the physical, social, interpersonal, and functional context from which the data was collected.

4. Data Collection Strategies:

Provide precise descriptions of data collection techniques

5. Data Analysis Strategies:

Carefully describe how the data was sorted and synthesized into patterns

6. Analytical Premises:

Make explicit the conceptual framework (i.e., theoretical orientation or philosophical position) which informs the study and from which findings from prior research can be integrated or contrasted.

Interobserver Reliability in Data Collection (use a combination)

1. Record verbatim accounts to illustrate the participants meaning.

2. Record low-inference descriptions that are concrete, literal, and precise descriptions.

3. Use a team approach of multiple researchers.

4. Use technology to record data with tape players, still, and movie cameras.

5. Ask participants to keep diaries or make anecdotal records for the researcher.

6. Ask participants to confirm researcher hunches or insights (called "member checking")

7. Ask key informant to review data obtained by the researcher

8. Seek participants' views that contradict the emerging patterns of meanings. Report these "negative cases."

Strategies that Increase Internal Validity

1. Lengthy data collection period - usually 1 year or more

2. Use of participants' language

3. Field research in natural settings

4. Disciplined subjectivity:

a. researcher identifies all his/her potential biases about a topic before data collection

b. researher keeps a reflexive journal on feelings, hunches, and insights

5. Document baseline data and the source of the baseline data, and document the nature of changes throughout fieldwork.

6. Baseline data should identify the participants' definition of cultural norms or appropriate behavior.

7. Seek participant reaction, independent corroboration, and confirmation at all stages of the research process.

8. Describe the total possible documents, subgroups, events, setting, & persons in a social network and how purposeful sampling was done to determine whether the findings represent only certain groups or situations.

9. Seek discrepant data during data collection.

Strategies that Increase External Validity

1. Comparability - the degree to which the research design is adequately described

2. Translatability - the degree to which the researcher uses theoretical frameworks and research strategies that are understood by other researchers

3. Report the extent of typicality of the phenomenon