Validity refers to the extent to which a given study reflects the dominant values of a research community regarding what constitutes "good" research. Methodological texts on qualitative research provide a wide range of criteria and strategies to help qualitative researchers validate their studies. Given the importance of these strategies…

Over the past 30 years, qualitative research has emerged as a widely accepted alternative to the quantitative paradigm for performing research in educational communications and technology. As the new paradigm has evolved, it has spawned a variety of theoretical perspectives and methodological techniques that have both increased its potential…

There is limited information about specific research constructs developed by adults with intellectual disability in undertaking research despite increasing involvement in research "with" rather than "on" these individuals. Participatory research was used with three young adults with intellectual disability to collaboratively…

With the widespread use of learning analytics (LA) tools, there is a need to explore how these technologies can be used to enhance teaching and learning. Little research has been conducted on what human processes are necessary to facilitate meaningful adoption of LA. The research problem is that there is a lack of evidence-based guidance on how…

Research on engineering practice is scarce and sharing of qualitative research data can reduce the effort required for an aspiring researcher to obtain enough data from engineering workplaces to draw generalizable conclusions, both qualitative and quantitative. This paper describes how a large shareable qualitative data set on engineering…

This study aims to present high school students' perception of "English" through the impressions and images and the effect of these perceptions on their motivation in learning English. This qualitative study is based on the data about students' metaphors and the focus group interview to determine their effect on the students' motivation.…

Introduction: The Delphi technique is widely used in library and information science research. However, many researchers in the field fail to employ standard statistical tests when using this technique. This makes the technique vulnerable to criticisms of its reliability and validity. The general goal of this article is to explore how…

There has been much discussion about quantitative and qualitative approaches to research in different disciplines. In the behavioural and social sciences, these two paradigms are compared to reveal their relative strengths and weaknesses. But the debate about both traditions has commonly taken place in academic books. It is hard to find an article…

"Research Methods in Education" introduces research methods as an integrated set of techniques for investigating questions about the educational world. This lively, innovative text helps students connect technique and substance, appreciate the value of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and make ethical research decisions.…

Intelligence gathering, or data collection, is a preliminary and critical stage of decision making. Two key approaches to intelligence gathering are "discovery" and "idea imposition." The discovery approach allows us to learn about possibilities by gathering intelligence in order to identify and weigh options. The idea imposition approach limits…

Evaluations should be issues driven, not methods driven. The starting point should be priority programs to be evaluated or policies to be tested. From this starting point, a list of evaluation questions is identified. For each evaluation question, the task is to identify the best available method for answering that question. Hence it is likely…

Social validity is the extent to which procedures, goals, and outcomes are acceptable and important to end users and is not commonly addressed during assessment development. This article pilots a process of triangulating multiple methods to evaluate the social validity of a self-report assessment. These procedures were piloted using the Child…

This discussion paper compares and contrasts "inductive" and "deductive" research approaches as described by Trochim (2006) and Plano Clark and Creswell (2007). It also examines the "exploratory" and "confirmatory" approaches by Onwueghuzie and Leech (2005) with respect to the assumption each holds about the nature of knowledge. The paper starts…

Over the past few years, the focus group method has assumed a very important role as a method for collecting qualitative data in social and behavioural science research. This article elucidates theoretical and practical problems and prospects associated with the use of focus groups as a qualitative research method in social and behavioural science…

This article proposes working criteria for guiding and judging the validity of performance-related qualitative work based on Conquergood's dialogical performance and Madison's performance of possibilities. A series of criteria is proposed considering three performance-based stages that pursue new meanings for performance in/as qualitative inquiry:…