Validity

Ascertaining the validity of a study becomes a challenging task when the field is questioning the concept of validity itself. Denzin and Lincoln have described what they call the "crisis of validity," (1994) questioning "the pursuits of universal or general laws, the capacity of science to produce accurate portrayals of its subject matter, the possibility of scientific progression toward objective truth, and the right to claim scientific expertise" (p. 1026).

Valerie Janesick (2000) rejects the "trinity," validity, generalizability and reliability, and instead proposes that "validity in qualitative research has to do with description and explanation and whether or not the explanation fits the description" (2000, p 393). In other words, is the explanation credible?

For Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba (2000) the central question of validity is: "How do we know when we have specific social inquiries that are faithful enough to some human construction that we may feel safe in acting on them, or more important, that members of the community in which the research is conducted may act on them? To that question there is no final answer" (p. 180). They argue that the criteria for judging validity should be focused on the process and outcomes rather than the ways methods were applied.

What most authors seem to agree upon is that to make any claim of validity, researchers need to situate themselves and their interests, biases and influences. They also need to describe challenges of the project, "thereby recovering the entire research process for scrutiny in the results of the research" (Harding, 1987, p.9). Mary Gergen and Kenneth Gergen (2000) also call for researchers to remove the single voice of the "omniscience and to relativize it by including multiple voices" (p. 1028).

Ultimately, however, I agree with Hammersley (1990), who proposes that the two key elements of validity are credibility and plausibility. Credibility implies a consideration of "the nature of the phenomena concerned and the circumstances of the research" (p 61). In this chapter I have offered several elements to build this aspect of the validity of the research. I have described in detail how I collected the data. I described the analysis process, acknowledging the places where my work and beliefs influenced my decisions. I explored issues of ethical considerations and of the nature of the topic I decided to study. Plausibility is "whether we judge it as likely to be true given our existing knowledge" (Hammersley, p. 61). Not pretending to be taken "at face value," I follow Hammersley's requirements to present "evidence." The evidence is offered in the form of verbatim quotations edited only for readability throughout the data analysis chapters.⁹ However, as Valerie Janesick (2000) argues, credibility and plausibility are social judgments and it is up to the researchers and communities who are going to read and hopefully use this research, to speak to its validity.

I started this research believing that true collaboration can only take place when researchers share all decision-making processes. As I finish writing, I realize how much my understandings have changed. Collaboration is a complex concept and a complex practice and it can take different forms according to who is participating, where and for what purpose. Listening to participants talk about their participation and views on collaborative research has opened my mind to the multiple "faces" of collaboration. The next two chapters describe these faces.

⁹ The page number in the interview follows each quotation. Also, in those cases where the preceding paragraph does not include the name of the interviewee, I included it with the page number.