Ensuring Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Social Sciences Research

Abstract

Social sciences (SS) researchers have produced far less qualitative than quantitative research. This is due to many factors including particularly the lack of straightforward and easy-to-implement guidelines that would help researchers in the process of ensuring research rigor through reliability, validity, and/or other concepts. Nonetheless, the extant literature shows that most qualitative research measures on research rigor were developed in nursing, which is a natural science discipline, and that social science researchers often adopt these measures in their works. This chapter focuses on multiculturalism in business management discipline, as a rapidly growing field of the SS. While multiculturalism has become a key feature and a determinant of organizational success in today's rapidly globalized business environments, it may be a source of bias in qualitative research. Most importantly, the chapter develops a set of measures/techniques that will aid qualitative social science researchers, and business researchers specifically, on how to ensure research rigor.