Validity and Reliability In Qualitative Research: A Theoretical Analysis

The purpose of this study is to examine the debates about the validity and reliability criteria that are frequently addressed in the qualitative research tradition. For this purpose, concerns about validity and reliability issue have been analyzed in detail based on epistemological and theoretical conceptualizations. As a result of the analysis, it is seen that the issue of validity and reliability is important and researchers propose various conceptual and theoretical approaches to the subject. In addition to the views suggesting that these propositions regarding validity and reliability issue can be defined in various ways and function differently based on epistemological and theoretical differences. It is also seen that there are views emphasizing that the quality of each study should be assessed separately with a more rhetorical approach because it refuses to have pre-determined criteria in qualitative researches. Based on this analysis, the general conclusion that measuring the quality of qualitative studies is a controversial issue and there is no single way to measure quality has been obtained