Aurelija raises a question that echoes the "paradigm dialogue" over the past quarter century--debates among qualitative and quantitative researchers about what counts for truth, what it means to know. [Up on soapbox] Questions of validity are fundamental to the logic of your research, which points to what you're asking and how you set about to answer it. There's no one right answer (i.e., validity = "triangulate"); validity is the mortar of your overall approach. There are also different kinds of threats to validity, ranging across whether you captured what you thought you captured to whether you've considered alternative explanations to understand what you found. [Down from soapbox] "...just trust..." isn't enough, but what _is_ ? Especially when you've given up on notions of objective truth, as I assume you have if you're doing some kind of interpretive analysis of online exchanges. Here's what educational researcher Joe Maxwell has to say: "[T]he idea of objective truth isn't essential to a theory of validity that does what most researchers want it to do, which is to give them some grounds for distinguishing accounts that are credible from those that are not." (Qualitative Research Design, p. 87). So then, what's credible? The answer lies in the integrity of your design--how different facets--theory (and the epistemology that implies) and methodology--come together to form a whole. David -------------------air-l-admin@aoir.org------------------- To:air-l@aoir.org CC: Subject:[Air-l] validity of the research hello :) Introducing qualitative research in the seminar, I was asked a question about the validity of online researches: how may we trust the results, when we don't get non-verbal information and how can we be sure whether the respondent says the truth or lies... I usually use additional methods for validation, such as observation or interviews IRL, but in some cases I (and possibly other researchers too) just trust, what my respondents say and build my conclusions on their words... so I wanted to ask, how do you deal with the question of validity doing the research online? Regards Aurelija Dagilyte _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l