Trustworthiness

Epistemological and Ontological Schism in Qualitative Research

Evaluating the quality of scientific research has largely been rooted in an implicit assumption that there is a single “truth” or one reality that is experienced similarly by everyone. The purpose of the scientific process then is to objectively observe, measure, and report the dimensions and properties of any given phenomenon. This positivist worldview maintains that what the scientific method reveals in a given context or culture is generalizable to other contexts and cultures because there is only one reality. Accordingly, quality research in this paradigm is concerned with how valid and reliable the data, procedures, and analysis of a study are in revealing this objective truth. Validity in this interpretation is concerned with how well a study meets the established requirements of the scientific method, which have been agreed upon to be important steps in uncovering observable realities. Reliability, on the other hand, conveys quality by ensuring that the outcomes of a study are repeatable and replicable. To this day, this scientific viewpoint pervades the physical sciences; however, in the late 1970s, anthropologists, sociologists, and qualitative educational researchers began to question whether these assumptions and steps were proper approaches to research concerning multiple truths or realities that were context-specific.

The questions from this early cadre of researchers grew into a chorus of critiques of the hidden and embedded approaches to research in general and qualitative research in particular that emanated from the positivist paradigm. The belief was that these approaches were complicit in marginalizing the experiences and voices of cultures and peoples who did not have the resources, power, or space to assert their own narratives into the cannon of formalized knowledge about human beings and the social world. This new wave of thinking critiqued the prevailing positivist paradigm, injecting the notion of multiple truths and realities into the scientific method not only as an important and worthy endeavor but as an epistemological and ontological stance. In agreement, some scholars informed by critical social theory believed that the quality of research should be assessed by the political power it manifests for minoritized and oppressed peoples. Another subsection of critical scholars dismissed the need for any criteria to judge the quality of research as reductionist and denying the complexity that exists in the world. Still another group tried to reconcile these postpositivist critiques with an explicit focus on subjectivity; broad and flexible criteria for the evaluation of quality research; and sensitivity to histories, context, and the positionality of the researcher. The concept of trustworthiness emerged from the thinking and writing of scholars in the third group as a way to effectively address the epistemological and ontological concerns of research while attending to the issues of research quality.

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