Methodological rigour within a qualitative framework

This paper discusses the literature on establishing rigour in research studies. It describes the methodological trinity of reliability, validity and generalization and explores some of the issues relating to establishing rigour in naturalistic inquiry.

Those working within the naturalistic paradigm have questioned the issue of using validity, reliability and generalizability to demonstrate robustness of qualitative research. Triangulation has been used to demonstrate confirmability and completeness and has been one means of ensuring acceptability across paradigms. Emerging criteria such as goodness and trustworthiness can be used to evaluate the robustness of naturalistic inquiry.