Validity...or Trustworhiness?

It's been a crazy few days!  If it weren't for my brother coming down to hangout for a while I probably would have more in common with Nosferatu than a regular human being😹 (having been stuck indoors for most of the weekend).  When I started off this summer I gave myself a deadline to be done with my methods chapter by August 30th (chapter 3 of my proposal).  After reading...and reading...and reading...and re-reading (select articles form EDDE 802), I reached a point of saturation when it comes to methods.  I really wanted to read all of Lincoln & Guba's 1985 book called Naturalistic Inquiry during this round, but it seems like I will just need to focus on specific aspects of the book.

So, in this whirlwind of activity, I went through the preamble to my methods section, my target participant descriptions, my data collection, my data analysis techniques, and any limitations.  I added to these sections, explicated, went more in-depth in each section, I corrected issues that were brought up by Debra in EDDE 805, some outstanding issues and comments from the feedback on the parts I had worked on MDDE 702, and some of the initial comments I got back from my dissertation chair. **phew** That was hard work!  The only parts that I still have left to complete in order to be "done" with my methods section are (1) The ethics section; (2) the validity/reliability/bias section;  (3) a conclusion section for the chapter bringing it all together; (4) an appendix with a sample survey; and (5) an appendix with the participant consent form.  I am considering adding (6) the REB application to an appending as well before I call this section "done".  I am not sure if I will be done by August 30th (as was the original plan) but I think I will be damn close.

That said, there is one thing that is tripping me up, and that has to do with the validity/reliability/bias section.  Bias is actually not that hard.  I think I can write up procedures and things to be on the lookout for in order to avoid bias in both data collection and analysis.  The thing that  is much more concerning is philosophical:  Do I go with Trustworthiness, Credibility, Dependability, and Transferability as what I talk about in this section (coming from the Lincoln and Guba tradition of qualitative research work)?  Or do I choose the more traditional Validity and Reliability and discuss my methods in that frame of reference?  Of course, for qualitative studies the Lincoln & Guba approach makes sense (at least it does to me, and it's references in a variety of other texts I've read on qualitative approaches to research), but at the same time quite a few of the texts that I've read (both on case studies and on qualitative studies in general) still use reliability and validity as terms in qualitative researcher. So, so I "translate" validity and reliability (from the texts) in Lincoln & Guba terms?  Just discuss in the framework of Lincoln & Guba? or try to smash both together?  Perhaps start with Validity & Reliability and transition to L&G terms since they make sense?    I need to re-read Chapter 11 of Naturalistic Inquiry this week to help make up my mind (any thoughts are more than welcome in the comments).

As of this point I am at 23 pages (with 1 paragraph of lorem ipsum text, and quite a few scraps of though patterns for items 1 and 2 above), so I am thinking I should be wrapping this up soon and not getting logorrhea.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Latour: Third Source of Uncertainty - Objects have agency too!

Image
Continuing on my exploration of ANT, and asynchronous and indirect dialogue with Latour - this blog post will cover the third source of uncertainty, which according to Latour, is that Objects have agency too! As with the previous blog posts, I've pulled out quotes from the book that seemed interesting, or that I reacted to in some way, and I am responding to them here. no tie can be said to be durable and made of social stuff (p. 66) This quote seems to continue Latour's assertion that there is no such thing as "social" or "social stuff" and that "social", or the meaning of needs to be negotiated and better understood.  It also continues the thought that social can only be seen from the actions of its actors, the traces they leave behind, and that these bonds are not durable because they need continuous reinforcement. I guess Social is a perishable item. Left to its own devices, a power relationship that mobilizes nothing but social skil...
Read more

MOOC participation - open door policy and analytics

The other day I was reading ZML Didaktik on the topic of MOOC participants. In MOOCs, one of the big questions is why are people lurking and not participating? If more than 500 people join a MOOC, why are only 10% contributing with any amount of regularity?  On the same blog, in a previous blog post, I had commented (it was an open stream of thought really) that perhaps there should be an open enrollment period, and then if the system sees that certain participants are bellow a threshold of activity, the system may give them the option to self-identify as a lurker, or un-register from the class. This line of thought went along a view that compared to the traditional classroom; in a traditional classroom students register for the course, they can attend classes for a week and then decide whether or not they want to stay with the course or not. If they do stay with the course they know that there is a certain amount of "lurking" that they can get away with, but they do have ...
Read more

You've been punk'd! However, that was an educational experience

Image
It's now the end of Teaching Goes Massive: New Skills Required (aka #massiveteaching) on coursera. Well, almost, we still have a couple of days left. I guess that the lesson here is that we were (the "learners") were punk'd† by Paul-Olivier Dehaye of the Univerisity of Zurich. After that last blog post (and subsequent pickup of the post by George Siemens and others) Inside Higher Education and the Chronicle wanted to chat with me about this MOOC experience. I only had time for one of the two before things went to press, so my 15 minutes of fame went to IHE.  Both IHE and the C hronicle have written about the topic, and have received some information from Coursera on the incident.  Others have also written about it (see here , here and here ) It's surprising to me that the University, and Coursera, waited until after this thing was a big issue in order to respond in the class, and clue people into what was happening. On Wednesday (day 3 of Week 3/3 of the ...
Read more