Explore – Smartphone-based Activities: Put your investigative skills to the test with these quick interactive activities. Dig deeper into key concepts and understand how they might relate to your own research project via guided website searches and online discussion questions.

16.1 Qualitative research credibility

Search ‘credible research’ and make a list of the factors that you find.

Now read this SAGE article about trustworthiness in qualitative research:

Frey, B. (2018). Trustworthiness. In The SAGE encyclopedia of educational research, measurement, and evaluation (Vols. 1-4). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

What features have you discovered that are unique to the credibility of qualitative research?

16.2 Counting in qualitative research

Google Reliable and Unreliable Numbers. Now read the following paper to understand how using numbers can work in qualitative research:

Hannah, D. R., & Lautsch, B. A. (2011). Counting in Qualitative Research: Why to Conduct it, When to Avoid it, and When to Closet it. Journal of Management Inquiry, 20(1), 14–22.

This paper reviews why counting is a controversial issue in qualitative research in business studies and explains how this controversy creates a ‘multiple audience problem’ for qualitative researchers. It goes on to identify the purposes that can be served by four different types of counting.

What is the multiple audience problem?

What are the different types of counting?