All research is required to meet the benchmarks of rigour and quality criteria that are closely tied to the “paradigmatic underpinnings of a particular discipline, in which a particular investigation is conducted” (Morrow, 2005, p. 250). Guba and Lincoln (1989) and others (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005) have suggested the following criteria for assessing the quality of qualitative research: credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability. The aim of Guba and Lincoln’s (1985) criteria for assessing the quality or soundness of research is to account for and support the argument that data and subsequent findings obtained in interpretive qualitative inquiry are “worth paying attention to” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 300). Interpretive research relies heavily on texts as data sources and therefore the trustworthiness criteria proposed by Guba and Lincoln are the best measures for determining the quality of this research. The following is a description of how the four criteria (credibility, dependability, triangulation transferability, and confirmability) for judging the quality of this study were addressed.
The first criterion, credibility, is concerned with the extent to which research is able to yield credible, believable, or convincing results that link to the perspectives or lived experiences of the participants and the particular setting studied. Guba and Lincoln (1989) initially suggested that credibility can be achieved by employing techniques such as prolonged engagement, persistent observation, peer briefing, member checks and triangulation. The field work was spent interacting with participants, interviewing, and purposefully observing the action and pieces of work produced by the research participants. The researcher’s engagement with the participants and immersion during the field work, both as a resource person supporting them to build their assessment skills, and as an
observer, made it possible to gain a deep understanding of their assessment practices and the issues encountered in their classroom settings.
The second criterion for judging the quality of qualitative research is dependability, which is a measure of how consistently a researcher employs and accounts for the integrated processes of data collection, data analysis, interpretation, triangulation, and theory generation (Borman, Clarke, Cotner, & Lee, 2006; L. Cohen, et al., 2007; Merriam, 2009; Trochim, 2006). Strategies that were applied to addressing the issue of dependability in this study included the maintenance of organised records of the data collected. An audit trial, which involves systematic checking of raw data for their accuracy, as well as to update data, has been applied (Schwandt & Halpern, 1988, cited in Flick, 2009). The triangulation process further strengthens the data.
Triangulation is the third criterion and involves the use of multiple data collection sources (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) in order to bring more than one source of data to a single point and thus illuminate the findings and results (Merriam, 2009). In this study, the participants’ views, thinking and ideas were explored through interviews, observations, and the documents they presented, which were listed and analysed. This process enabled the researcher “to corroborate, elaborate, or illuminate the research in question” (Rossman & Wilson, 1994, cited in Marshall & Rossman, 2006, p. 202) so as to reduce or eliminate the threat of bias or influence from the researcher (Flick, 2009). Therefore, the processes of multiple data generation and triangulation serve to strengthen the robustness of the study, as compared to the use of a single method of data collection (McMillan & Schumacher, 2006; Patton, 2002; Radnor, 2001). Furthermore, the inclusion of a reasonable number of research participants and more than one data collection method contributes to a study’s usefulness for other settings (Marshall & Rossman, 2006).
Transferability is the fourth criterion used to assess the quality of qualitative inquiry and is concerned with the ability of research to generalise or transfer the methods and findings to other contexts that experience similar situations, “with similar research questions or questions of practice” (Marshall & Rossman, 2006,
p. 201). Using qualitative research findings to explain a similar situation in other settings is thought to be problematic, and is one of the limitations of this approach. However, Trochim (2009) argues that from a qualitative perspective, transferability is primarily the responsibility of the reader doing the generalising, and, therefore, as Creswell (2003) argues, it is up to readers to form their own opinions and learn from the research findings.
The fifth and final criterion in this discussion is confirmability. This addresses the issue of whether the research study provides sufficient evidence that confirms the findings of the investigation to the readers. It is an evaluation of whether the findings are logically linked back to the issues or problems of interest investigated through the analytical method used (Borman, et al., 2006). The issue of confirmability was addressed in this research by using multiple data sources and by triangulating the data generated, in combination with careful analysis of the data. The inferences and interpretations that were made of the situation were then studied (Borman, et al., 2006; Lincoln & Guba, 1985, 2000; Marshall & Rossman, 2006; Trochim, 2006). Maykut and Morehouse (1994) suggest that confirmability can be achieved by a researcher when the reader is given access to the raw data, including transcripts and other evidence that show the audit trial. In this study, the researcher applied member checking to confirm the information provided by the participants, who are the best people to judge the accuracy of the information provided. The researcher also adopted a participatory and collaborative approach during the entire research process, which enabled those involved to check and confirm the data and findings of this research. Ideally, research should be theoretically sound, methodologically trustworthy, and ethically transparent (Marshall & Rossman, 2006, p. 215). The ethical issues that need to be addressed in research are discussed next.