Concept Advancement: Enhancing Inductive Validity

Abstract

Enhancing inductive validity while advancing a concept has always been a dilemma for qualitative researchers. This dilemma is paramount for researchers completing a series of small discrete projects all focused on the same concept. How do researchers use knowledge from their earlier research while maintaining an inductive paradigm? Template comparison, a method of sequential triangulation, is proposed as a solution to this problem. Template comparison allows the researcher to use findings from earlier studies, which employed the same or different qualitative methods, as a guide for the data collection, interpretative, and theoretical phases of the new study. The authors’ research of the concept of trust is used as an example of the application of template comparison.