Naturalistic Inquiry

I had been having an enormous difficulty trying to translate the concepts of validity and reliability for the qualitative section of my dissertation. My chair-person recommended this book and boy...was I ever glad she did. The section on Establishing Trustworthiness is especially well written and gave me a clear understanding of how I wanted that part of my methods section to look.

Lincoln and Guba have written three previous books dealing with research and evaluation in education and the social sciences. This book discusses and explores a paradigm in naturalistic research and evaluation that is not rigid in structure. Lincoln and Guba provide detailed suggestions and a checklist that assist naturalistic researchers in developing credible and trustworthy processes of research. Various methodological stances exist for varying research needs. Lincoln and Guba's book would greatly assist research purposes that require a detailed understanding of a particular setting. This book will interest graduate students, educational researchers, and social scientists struggling with qualitative and quantitative methodologies.