Validity and Reliability

Writing Task 1:

Validity

Your study must discuss its validity. Validity is an assessment of the truthfulness of a study's results and findings-e.g. its trustworthiness. You may wish to review the following sources about validity:

- Determining Validity in Qualitative Inquiry-it is available as a PDF in the forum.
- Read about measurement reliability and validity at http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/measure.php
- Read about design validity at http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/design.php

Argue the validity of your study. Be sure to build your argument upon the types and threats to validity discussed in the textbook. If you need additional ideas for your argument, then consider the following points:

- Utility-the hope that the outcomes of your study and its recommendations help stakeholders.
- Participation-the goal that all stakeholders are offered an open invitation to participate within the study and view its results.
- Dependability-the desire to produce a scientific method able to tackle the problem.
- Transferability/Generalizability-the concept asking whether your results, plans, systems models, and other parts of your study may be transferred into other contexts.
- Credibility-a willingness to demonstrate your efforts as credible requires:
Persistence in observation and data collection-the concept that longer observation times mitigate the observation of shocking events such as infighting, professional stresses, and other transitory events leading to short-term changes in observed behaviors.

o Triangulation-the belief that drawing upon an assortment of sources leads to a verifiable, believable, and valid understanding of the data. The main assumption is that integrating multiple perspectives into understanding leads to research of greater utility and reduced bias. Think about it-is a problem just what one person says it should be? No! Tackling complex problems requires multiple perspectives as to gain a grasp of the real problem and potential solutions.

o Negative Case Analysis (NCA)-requires you to seek and discuss data failing to support or possibly contradicting your study, assumptions, or some particular crucial element within your study.

o Referential Adequacy-asserts your selected methods of data recording are able to collect and store the required data o Linguistic Adequacy-is the rarely used concept that researchers should be willing and able to utilize the natural linguistic structures appearing in the data. Being able to argue this point for your study shows a study able to transform the phenomenology of language into a component of a study. Demonstrating yourself as credible is extremely messy and difficult; if not impossible. Nonetheless, you may wish to argue for your credibility as to lend trustworthiness to your research effort.

Writing Task 2:

Reliability

Pages 67-76 in Fundamentals of Social Work Research discuss measurement reliability and validity.

You should argue your measurements as reliable and valid using the categories presented on paged 67-76. You may also wish to acknowledge potential threats to reliability as to provide a balanced argument.

Article - Determining Validity in Qualitative Inquiry by John W. Creswell and Dana L. Miller

Attachment:- Creswell validity.pdf