comps reading - Criteria for Assessing the Trustworthiness of Naturalistic Inquiries

Written by Egon G. Guba, this paper deals with what suggests in the title "Criteria for assessing the trustworthiness of naturalistic inquiries," starting from defining what naturalistic inquiry is, describing the differences between naturalistic and rationalistic paradigms, explaining questions of trustworthiness should be addressed, bringing about methods that researchers can employ to guard trustworthiness, and the implications.

To begin with, the term "naturalistic" describes a paradigm for inquiry, not a method. There are many different paradigms used in research inquiry, and the chief ones are naturalistic and rationalistic paradigm. They differ on certain key assumptions: (rationalistic vs naturalistic)

• The nature of reality: single and converge reality vs multiple and diverge reality
• The nature of the inquirer / object relationship: independent vs interrelated
• The nature of "truth statements": nomothetic (generalization, similarity) vs idiographic (differences)

The two inquiry paradigm also differ in some research approaches taken:

• Methods: quantitative vs qualitative
• Quality criterion: rigor (internal validity) vs relevance (external validity)
• Source of theory: priori theory vs grounded theory
• Knowledge types used: propositional knowledge vs tacit knowledge
• Instruments: layers of instruments vs inquirers as instruments
• Design: preordinate design vs emergent design
• Setting: laboratory (best) vs real world (nature, worst)

Here is the four questions of trustworthiness should be addressed, and from this we come up with for aspects of trustworthiness appropriate to scientific (rationalistic) and naturalistic terms, and different methods that naturalistic inquiry can employ to guard each aspect of trustworthiness, respectively.

Finally, five implications were drawn from the preceding analysis by Guba. Now they are listed as follows:

• Naturalistic inquiry has its own set of criteria for adequacy
• The proposed criteria, like scientific criteria, have utility at several stages in the inquiry process
• The statement of criteria is not equivalent to the statement of decision rules for applying these criteria
• The use of the naturalistic paradigm is fraught with special risks for an investigation
• The methods suggested cannot be viewed as an orthodoxy.