Community Validation as a Method to Establish Trustworthiness in Qualitative LIS Research

TY - JOUR

T1 - Community Validation as a Method to Establish Trustworthiness in Qualitative LIS Research

AU - Salzano, Rachel

AU - Hall, Hazel

AU - Webster, Gemma

AU - Brazier, David

N1 - Copyright: Author(s) retain copyright, but ASIS&T receives an exclusive publication license.

PY - 2023/10/22

Y1 - 2023/10/22

N2 - A core aspect of the scientific process is the verification of the credibility of findings. In research with a qualitative and mixed methods approach, there is ongoing discussion on the most effective method to validate results. Discussed in this poster is the efficacy of community validation as a novel method to determine trustworthiness of research findings. This involved research with ‘not‐yet‐participants’ to explore the accuracy of researcher findings from analysis of interview data collected in an earlier exercise from a different, but related, community of informants. The use of community validation here resulted in increased interpretive power of initial results, and of new results to develop understanding of the topic. It is concluded that community validation expands upon current methods of determining trustworthiness in research with a qualitative approach. It is particularly useful for research with participants who are not the population of direct interest, but informants who supply data based on their own observations of the members of the target population, such as Library and Information Science (LIS) practitioners.

AB - A core aspect of the scientific process is the verification of the credibility of findings. In research with a qualitative and mixed methods approach, there is ongoing discussion on the most effective method to validate results. Discussed in this poster is the efficacy of community validation as a novel method to determine trustworthiness of research findings. This involved research with ‘not‐yet‐participants’ to explore the accuracy of researcher findings from analysis of interview data collected in an earlier exercise from a different, but related, community of informants. The use of community validation here resulted in increased interpretive power of initial results, and of new results to develop understanding of the topic. It is concluded that community validation expands upon current methods of determining trustworthiness in research with a qualitative approach. It is particularly useful for research with participants who are not the population of direct interest, but informants who supply data based on their own observations of the members of the target population, such as Library and Information Science (LIS) practitioners.

KW - library and information science

KW - qualitative research

KW - research methods

KW - validation

U2 - 10.1002/pra2.961

DO - 10.1002/pra2.961

M3 - Article

VL - 60

SP - 1110

EP - 1112

JO - Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology

JF - Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology

IS - 1

T2 - 86th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science & Technology

Y2 - 27 October 2023 through 31 October 2023

ER -