Validity Criteria for Performance-Related Qualitative Work

Abstract

This article proposes working criteria for guiding and judging the validity of performance-related qualitative work based on Conquergood's dialogical performance and Madison's performance of possibilities. A series of criteria is proposed considering three performance-based stages that pursue new meanings for performance in/as qualitative inquiry: (1) Imaginative performance as an ongoing textual rehearsal process; (2) Performance in use, associated with artistic representation, involves transacting lived experiences of self or Others to audiences; and (3) Postperformance as a coreflexive member checking process. Validity criteria designed to guide the development, enactment, and assessment for dialogical performance of possibilities follow. Then, a reflexive narrative inquiry into students' performances in a readers' theater is described and analyzed in terms of these process-based validity criteria. Performance pedagogy is a powerful dialogical tool in creating new understandings and iterations of performance/inquiry that empower participants, including researchers, subjects, performers, and audiences, in communitarian steps toward social justice.