What is Trustworthiness in Qualitative Research?
What is trustworthiness in qualitative research and what does it mean?For quantitative studies, researchers refer to it as validity and reliability. However, in qualitative studies, this concept is more abstract and expressed in different terms. Since qualitative researchers do not use instruments with established metrics about validity and reliability, it is pertinent to address how qualitative researchers establish that the research study’s findings are credible, transferable, confirmable, and dependable. Trustworthiness focuses on establishing these four elements, and we describe them in more detail below.
Credibility
Credibility is the how confident the qualitative researcher is in the truth of the research study’s findings. This boils down to the question of “How do you know that your findings are true and accurate?” Qualitative researchers can use triangulation to show the research study’s findings are credible.
Transferability
Transferability is how the qualitative researcher demonstrates that the research study’s findings are applicable to other contexts. In this case, “other contexts” can mean similar situations, similar populations, and similar phenomena. Qualitative researchers can use thick description to show that the research study’s findings can be applicable to other contexts, circumstances, and situations.
Confirmability
Confirmability is the degree of neutrality in the research study’s findings. In other words, this means that the findings are based on participants’ responses and not any potential bias or personal motivations of the researcher. This involves making sure that researcher bias does not skew the interpretation of what the research participants said to fit a certain narrative. Qualitative researchers can establish confirmability by providing an audit trail that highlights every step of data analysis and justifies the decisions made. This helps establish that the research study’s findings accurately portray participants’ responses.
Dependability
Finally, dependability refers to how likely other researchers could repeat the study and obtain consistent findings. In other words, if a person wanted to replicate your study, they should have enough information from your research report to do so and obtain similar findings as your study did. A qualitative researcher can use inquiry audit in order to establish dependability, which requires an outside person to review and examine the research process and the data analysis in order to ensure that the findings are consistent and could be repeated.
We hope that this clears up any confusion about trustworthiness in qualitative research and helps shed light on the different components involved in establishing a trustworthy research study!
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