Week 5: Research philosophy and design

Students’ Learning Outcomes

• define ontology, epistemology, and axiology, and explain their relevance to

business research;
• reflect on your own epistemological, ontological and axiological stance;
• explain the relevance for business research of philosophical positions such as
positivism, critical realism, interpretivism, postmodernism, and pragmatism;
• reflect on and articulate your own philosophical position in relation to your research;
• distinguish between deductive, inductive, and abductive approaches to theory
development.
• understand the importance of your decisions when designing research and the need
to achieve methodological coherence throughout your research design;
• explain the differences between exploratory, descriptive, explanatory and
evaluative research;
• identify the main research strategies and choose from among these to achieve
coherence throughout your research design;
• understand the criteria to evaluate research quality and consider these when
designing your research.

Task - Forum

• Discuss the research philosophy and approaches to theory development in Business

and Management Research
• Decide on your research philosophy and design

Research Philosophy

Introduction

Most people plan their research in relation to a question that needs to be answered or a problem that needs
to be solved. They then think about what data they need and the techniques they use to collect them. You
are not therefore unusual if early on in your research you consider whether you should, for example, use
a questionnaire or undertake interviews. However, how you collect your data belongs in the centre of the
research ‘onion,’ the diagram we use to depict the issues underlying the choice of data collection
techniques and analysis procedures in Figure 5.1. In coming to this central point, you need to explain why

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 you made the choice you did so that others can see that your research should be taken seriously (Crotty
1998). Consequently, there are important outer layers of the onion that you need to understand and explain
rather than just peel and throw away!

Figure 5.1 The research ‘onion’ (Saunders, 2016, p. 124)

The philosophical underpinnings of business and management

What is the research philosophy?

The term research philosophy refers to a system of beliefs and assumptions about the development of
knowledge. Although this sounds rather profound, it is precisely what you are doing when embarking on
research: developing knowledge in a particular field. The knowledge development you are embarking
upon may not be as dramatic as a new theory of human motivation, but even answering a specific problem
in a particular organisation you are, nonetheless, developing new knowledge.

Whether you are consciously aware of them or not, at every stage in your research, you will make a
number of types of assumption (Burrell and Morgan 1979). These include assumptions about human
knowledge (epistemological assumptions), about the realities you encounter in your research (ontological

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 assumptions) and the extent and ways your own values influence your research process (axiological
assumptions). These assumptions inevitably shape how you understand your research questions, the
methods you use, and how you interpret your findings (Crotty 1998). A well-thought-out and consistent
set of assumptions will constitute a credible research philosophy, which will underpin your
methodological choice, research strategy, and data collection techniques and analysis procedures. This
will allow you to design a coherent research project, in which all elements of research fit together. Johnson
and Clark (2006) note that, as business and management researchers, we need to be aware of the
philosophical commitments we make through our choice of research strategy since this will have a
significant impact on what we do and how we understand what it is we are investigating.

Prior to undertaking a research methods module, few of our students have thought about their own beliefs
about the nature of the world around them, what constitutes acceptable and desirable knowledge, or the
extent to which they believe it necessary to remain detached from their research data. The process of
exploring and understanding your own research philosophy requires you to hone the skill of reflexivity,
that is, to question your own thinking and actions, and learn to examine your own beliefs with the same
scrutiny as you would apply to the beliefs of others (Gouldner 1970). This may sound daunting, but we
all do this in our day-to-day lives when we learn from our mistakes. As a researcher, you need to develop
your reflexivity, to become aware of and actively shape the relationship between your philosophical
position and how you undertake your research (Alvesson and Sköldberg 2000).

You may be wondering about the best way to start this reflexive process. In part, your exploration of your
philosophical position and how to translate it into a coherent research practice will be influenced by
practical considerations, such as the time and finances available for your research project, and the access
you can negotiate to data. However, there are two things that you can do to start making a more active
and informed philosophical choice:

• begin asking yourself questions about your research beliefs and assumptions;
• familiarise yourself with major research philosophies within business and management.

Is there a best philosophy for business and management research?

You may be wondering at this stage whether you could take a shortcut, and adopt ‘the best’ philosophy
for business and management research. One problem with such a shortcut would be the possibility of
discovering a clash between ‘the best’ philosophy and your own beliefs and assumptions. Another
problem would be that business and management researchers do not agree about one best philosophy
(Tsoukas and Knudsen 2003). In terms of developing your own philosophy and designing your research
project, it is important to recognize that philosophical disagreements are an intrinsic part of business and
management research. When business and management emerged as an academic discipline in the
twentieth century, it drew its theoretical base from a mixture of disciplines in the social sciences (e.g.
sociology, psychology, economics), natural sciences (e.g. chemistry, biology), applied sciences (e.g.
engineering, statistics), humanities (e.g. literary theory, linguistics, history, philosophy) and the domain
of organisational practice (Starbuck 2003). In drawing on these disciplines, it absorbed the various
associated philosophies dividing and defining them, resulting in the coexistence of multiple research
philosophies, paradigms and approaches, and methodologies we see today.

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 Business and management scholars have spent long decades debating whether this multiplicity of research
philosophies, paradigms, and methodologies is desirable, and have reached no agreement. Instead, two
opposing perspectives have emerged: pluralism and unificationism. Unificationists see business and
management as fragmented and argue that this fragmentation prevents it from becoming more like a true
scientific discipline. They advocate unification of management research under one strong research
philosophy, paradigm, and methodology. Pluralists see the diversity of the field as helpful, arguing it
enriches business and management (Knudsen 2003).

In this week, we take a pluralist approach and suggest that each research philosophy and paradigm
contributes something unique and valuable to business and management research, representing a different
and distinctive ‘way of seeing’ organizational realities (Morgan 1986). However, we believe that you
need to be aware of the depth of difference and disagreements between these distinct philosophies. This
will help you to both outlines and justify your own philosophical choices in relation to your chosen
research method.

Ontological, epistemological and axiological assumptions

We look at three types of research assumptions to distinguish research philosophies: ontology,

epistemology, and axiology.

Ontology refers to assumptions about the nature of reality. Although this may seem abstract and far
removed from your intended research project, your ontological assumptions shape the way in which you
see and study your research objects. In business and management, these objects include organizations,
management, individuals’ working lives, and organizational events and artifacts. Your ontology,
therefore, determines how you see the world of business and management and, thus, your choice of what
to research for your research project.

Imagine you wanted to research resistance to organizational change. For a long time, business and
management scholars made the ontological assumption that resistance to change was highly damaging to
organizations. They argued it was a kind of organizational misbehavior, and happened when change
programs went wrong. Consequently, they focused their research on how this phenomenon could be
eliminated, looking for types of employee that were most likely to resist change and the management
actions that could prevent or stop resistance. More recently, some researchers have started to view the
concept of resistance to change differently, resulting in a new strand of research. These researchers see
resistance as a phenomenon that happens all the time whenever an organisational change takes place, and
that benefits organizations by addressing problematic aspects of change programs. Their different
ontological assumptions mean that they focus on how resistance to change can best be harnessed to benefit
organizations, rather than looking for ways to eliminate resistance (Thomas and Hardy 2011).

Epistemology concerns assumptions about knowledge, what constitutes acceptable, valid, and legitimate
knowledge, and how we can communicate knowledge to others (Burrell and Morgan 1979). Whereas
ontology may initially seem rather abstract, the relevance of epistemology is more obvious. The
multidisciplinary context of business and management means that different types of knowledge – ranging
from numerical data to textual and visual data, from facts to interpretations, and including narratives,
stories, and even fictional accounts – can all be considered legitimate. Consequently, different business

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 and management researchers adopt different epistemologies in their research, including projects based on
archival research and autobiographical accounts (Martí and Fernández 2013), narratives (Gabriel et al.
2013) and fictional literature (De Cock and Land 2006). This variety of acceptable epistemologies gives
you a much greater choice of methods than you would have in many other academic disciplines. However,
it is important to understand the implications of different epistemological assumptions in relation to your
choice of method(s) and the strengths and limitations of subsequent research findings. It is your own
epistemological assumptions that will govern what you consider legitimate for your research.

Axiology refers to the role of values and ethics within the research process. This incorporates questions
about how we, as researchers, deal with both our own values and those of our research participants. As
we saw in the opening vignette, the role that your own values play in all stages of the research process is
of great importance if research results are to be credible. Heron (1996) argues that our values are the
guiding reason for all human action. He further argues that researchers demonstrate axiological skill by
being able to articulate their values as a basis for making judgments about what research they are
conducting and how they go about doing it. Choosing one topic rather than another suggests that you
think one of the topics is more important. Your choice of philosophy is a reflection of your values, as is
your choice of data collection techniques. For example, conducting a study where you place great
importance on data collected through interview work suggests that you value personal interaction with
your respondents more highly than their views expressed through an anonymous questionnaire.

Some of our students have found it helpful to write their own statement of personal values in relation to
the topic they are studying. For example, for the topic of career development, your personal values may
dictate that you believe developing their career is an individual’s responsibility. In finance, a researcher
may believe (hold the value) that as much information as possible should be available to as many
stakeholders as possible. Writing a statement of personal values can help heighten your awareness of
value judgments you are making in drawing conclusions from your data. Being clear about your own
value position can also help you in deciding what is appropriate ethically and explaining this in the event
of queries about decisions you have made.

Objectivism and subjectivism

Now you are familiar with the types of assumptions that research philosophies make, you need to be able
to distinguish between them. We discussed the emergence of business and management as a discipline
and how it absorbed a range of philosophies from natural sciences, social sciences and arts, and
humanities. Although this offers philosophical and methodological choice, it also means that business
and management research philosophies are scattered along with a multidimensional set of continua
(Niglas 2010) between two opposing extremes. Table 5.1 summarises the continua and their objectivist
and subjectivist extremes in relation to the three types of the philosophical assumption that we have just
discussed.

Objectivism incorporates the assumptions of the natural sciences, arguing that the social reality that we
research is external to us and others (referred to as social actors) (Table 5.1). This means that,
ontologically, objectivism embraces realism, which, in its most extreme form, considers social entities
to be like physical entities of the natural world, in so far as they exist independently of how we think of
them, label them, or even of our awareness of them. Because the interpretations and experiences of social

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 actors do not influence the existence of the social world, an objectivist in the most extreme form believes
that there is only one true social reality experienced by all social actors. This social world is made up of
solid, granular, and relatively unchanging ‘things,’ including major social structures into which
individuals are born (Burrell and Morgan 1979).

From an objectivist viewpoint, social and physical phenomena exist independently, being universal and
enduring in character. Consequently, it makes sense to study them in the same way as a natural scientist
would study nature. Epistemologically, objectivists seek to discover the truth about the social world,
through the medium of observable, measurable facts, from which law-like generalizations can be drawn
about the universal social reality. Axiologically, since the social entities and social actors exist
independently of each other, objectivists seek to keep their research free of values, which they believe
could bias their findings. They, therefore, also try to remain detached from their own values and beliefs
throughout the research process.

The social phenomenon of management can be researched in an objectivist way. You may argue that
management is an objective entity and decide to adopt an objectivist stance to the study of particular
aspects of management in a specific organization. In order to justify this you would say that the managers
in your organization have job descriptions which prescribe their duties, there are operating procedures to
which they are supposed to adhere, they are part of a formal structure which locates them in a hierarchy
with people reporting to them and they in turn report to more senior managers. This view emphasizes the
structural aspects of management and assumes that management is similar in all organizations. Aspects
of the structure in which management operates may differ, but the essence of the function is very much
the same in all organizations. If you took this ontological stance, your research would aim to discover the
laws that govern management behavior to predict how management would act in the future. You would
also attempt to lay aside any beliefs you may have developed from interacting with individual managers
in the past, in order to avoid these experiences coloring your conclusions about management in general.

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 Table 5.1 Philosophical assumptions as a multidimensional set of continua (Saunders, 2016, p. 129)

Alternatively, you may prefer to consider the objective aspects of management as less important than the
way in which managers attach their own meanings to their jobs and the way they think that those jobs
should be performed. This approach would be very much more akin to the subjectivist view.

Subjectivism incorporates assumptions of the arts and humanities (Table 5.1), asserting that social reality
is made from the perceptions and consequent actions of social actors (people). Ontologically,
subjectivism embraces nominalism (also sometimes called conventionalism). Nominalism, in its most
extreme form, considers that the order and structures of social phenomena we study (and the phenomena
themselves) are created by us as researchers and by other social actors through the use of language,
conceptual categories, perceptions, and consequent actions. For nominalists, there is no underlying reality
to the social world beyond what people (social actors) attribute to it, and, because each person experiences
and perceives reality differently, it makes more sense to talk about multiple realities rather than a single
reality that is the same for everyone (Burrell and Morgan 1979). A less extreme version of this is social
constructionism, which puts forward that reality is constructed through social interaction in which social
actors create partially shared meanings and realities.

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 As social interactions between actors are a continual process, social phenomena are in a constant state of
flux and revision. This means it is necessary as a researcher to study a situation in detail, including
historical, geographical, and socio-cultural contexts in order to understand what is happening or how
realities are being experienced. Unlike an objectivist researcher who seeks to discover universal facts and
laws governing social behavior, the subjectivist researcher is interested in different opinions and
narratives that can help to account for different social realities of different social actors. Subjectivists
believe that as they actively use these data, they cannot detach themselves from their own values. They
therefore openly acknowledge and actively reflect on and question their own values (Cunliffe (2003) calls
this ‘radical reflexivity’) and incorporate these within their research.

Let us suppose that you have decided to research customer motives and behavior. Customers, like other
social actors, may interpret the situations in which they find themselves differently as a consequence of
their own view of the world. Their different interpretations are likely to affect their actions and the nature
of their social interaction with others. From a subjectivist view, the customers you are studying both
interact with their environment and seek to make sense of it through their interpretation of events and the
meanings that they draw from these events. Consequently, their actions may be seen by others as being
meaningful in the context of these socially constructed interpretations and meanings.

As a subjectivist researcher, it is your role to seek to understand the different realities of the customers in
order to be able to make sense of and understand their motives, actions, and intentions in a meaningful
way. All this is some way from the objectivist position that customer service in an organisation has a
reality that is separate from the customers who perceive that reality. The subjectivist view is that customer
service is produced through the social interactions between service providers and customers and is
continually being revised as a result of this. In other words, at no time is there a definitive entity called
‘customer service.’ Different versions of customer service are experienced by different individuals, and
as an aggregate, it is constantly changing.

Approaches to theory development

We emphasized that your research project will involve the use of theory. That theory may or may not be
made explicit in the design of the research, although it will usually be made explicit in your presentation
of the findings and conclusions. The extent to which you are clear about the theory at the beginning of
your research raises an important question concerning the design of your research project. This is often
portrayed as two contrasting approaches to the reasoning you adopt: deductive or inductive. Deductive
reasoning occurs when the conclusion is derived logically from a set of premises, the conclusion being
true when all the premises are true (Ketokivi and Mantere 2010). For example, our research may concern
likely online retail sales of a soon-to-be-launched new games console. We form three premises:

• that online retailers have been allocated limited stock of the new games consoles by the
manufacturer;
• that customers’ demand for the consoles exceeds supply;
• that online retailers allow customers to pre-order the consoles.

If these premises are true we can deduce that the conclusion that online retailers will have ‘sold’ their
entire allocation of the new games consoles by the release day will also be true. In contrast, in inductive

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 reasoning, there is a gap in the logic argument between the conclusion and the premises observed, the
conclusion being ‘judged’ to be supported by the observations made (Ketokivi and Mantere 2010).
Returning to our example of the likely online retail sales of a soon-to-be-launched new games console,
we would start with observations about the forthcoming launch. Our observed premises would be:

• that news media are reporting that online retailers are complaining about only being allocated
limited stock of the new games consoles by manufacturers;
• that news media are reporting that demand for the consoles will exceed supply;
• that online retailers are allowing customers to pre-order the consoles.

Based on these observations, we have good reason to believe online retailers will have ‘sold’ their entire
allocation of the new games consoles by the release day. However, although our conclusion is supported
by our observations, it is not guaranteed. In the past, manufacturers have launched new games consoles
which have been commercial failures (Zigterman 2013). There is also a third approach to theory
development that is just as common in research, abductive reasoning, which begins with a ‘surprising
fact’ being observed (Ketokivi and Mantere 2010). This surprising fact is the conclusion rather than a
premise. Based on this conclusion, a set of possible premises is determined that is considered sufficient
or nearly sufficient to explain the conclusion. It is reasoned that, if this set of premises were true, then the
conclusion would be true as a matter of course. Because the set of premises is sufficient (or nearly
sufficient) to generate the conclusion, this provides a reason to believe that it is also true. Returning once
again to our example of the likely online retail sales of a soon-to-be-launched new games console, a
surprising fact (conclusion) might be that online retailers are reported in the news media as stating they
will have no remaining stock of the new games console for sale on the day of its release. However, if the
online retailers are allowing customers to pre-order the console prior to its release, then it would not be
surprising if these retailers had already sold their allocation of consoles. Therefore, using abductive
reasoning, the possibility that online retailers have no remaining stock on the day of release is reasonable.

Building on these three approaches to theory development (Figure 5.1), if your research starts with a
theory, often developed from your reading of the academic literature, and you design a research strategy
to test the theory, you are using a deductive approach (Table 5.3). Conversely, if your research starts by
collecting data to explore a phenomenon and you generate or build theory (often in the form of a
conceptual framework), then you are using an inductive approach (Table 5.3). Where you are collecting
data to explore a phenomenon, identify themes and explain patterns, to generate a new or modify an
existing theory which you subsequently test through additional data collection, you are using an abductive
approach (Table 5.3). The next three sub-sections explore the differences and similarities between these
three approaches and their implications for your research.

Table 5.3 Deduction, induction, and abduction: from reason to research (Saunders, 2016, p. 145)

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 Research Design

Introduction

We introduced the research onion as a way of depicting the issues underlying your choice of data
collection method or methods and peeled away the outer two layers – research philosophy and approach
to theory development. The way you answer your research question will be influenced by your research
philosophy and approach to theory development. Your research philosophy and approach to theory
development, whether this is deliberate or by default, will subsequently influence your selections shown
in the next three layers of the research onion (Figure 5.1). These three layers can be thought of as focusing
on the process of research design, which is the way you turn your research question into a research project.
The key to these selections will be to achieve coherence through your research design.

Choice and coherence in research design

Your research design is the general plan of how you will go about answering your research question(s)
(the importance of clearly defining the research question cannot be overemphasized). It will contain clear
objectives derived from your research question(s), specify the sources from which you intend to collect
data, how you propose to collect and analyze these, and discuss ethical issues and the constraints you will
inevitably encounter (e.g., access to data, time, location and money). Crucially, it should demonstrate that
you have thought through the elements of your particular research design.

The nature of your research project will also be either exploratory, descriptive, explanatory, evaluative,
or a combination of these, and we discuss the role of these in your research design. Within your research
design, you will need to use one or more research strategies to ensure coherence within your research
project. Finally, we discuss research strategies, their fit to research philosophy, and methodological
choices. Your methodological choice and related strategies will also influence the selection of an
appropriate time horizon. It is also important to establish the quality of your research design. These

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 aspects of your research design are vital to understanding what you wish to achieve and how you intend
to do so, even if your design changes subsequently.

Recognizing the purpose of your research design

Research can be designed to fulfill either an exploratory, descriptive, explanatory or evaluative purpose
or some combination of these. The way in which you ask your research question will inevitably involve
you in exploratory, descriptive, explanatory, or evaluative research. The purpose of your research may
also change over time. In this section, we discuss each purpose in more detail to help you to choose which
of these is appropriate to the nature of your research project.

Exploratory studies

An exploratory study is particularly useful if you wish to clarify your understanding of an issue, problem,
or phenomenon, such as if you are unsure of its precise nature. Exploratory research has the advantage
that it is flexible and adaptable to change. If you are conducting exploratory research, you must be willing
to change your direction as a result of new data that appear and new insights that occur to you.

Descriptive studies

The purpose of descriptive research is to gain an accurate profile of events, persons, or situations.
Descriptive research questions are likely, to begin with, or include, either ‘Who,’ ‘What,’ ‘Where,’
‘When’ or ‘How.’ Questions that you ask during data collection to gain a description of events, persons
or situations will also be likely to start with, or include, ‘Who,’ ‘What,’ ‘Where,’ ‘When’ or ‘How.’
Descriptive research may be an extension of a piece of exploratory research or a forerunner to a piece of
explanatory research. It is necessary to have a clear picture of the phenomenon on which you wish to
collect data prior to the collection of the data.

Often project tutors are rather wary of work that is too descriptive. There is a danger of their saying
‘That’s very interesting . . . however, so what?’ They will want you to go further and draw conclusions
from the data you are describing. They will encourage you to develop the skills of evaluating data and
synthesizing ideas. These are higher-order skills than those of accurate description. The description of
business and management research has an obvious place. However, it should be thought of as a means to
an end rather than an end in itself. This means that if your research project utilizes description, it is likely
to be a precursor to an explanation. Such studies are known as descripto-explanatory studies.

Explanatory studies

Studies that establish causal relationships between variables may be termed explanatory research.
Research questions that seek explanatory answers are likely, to begin with, or include, ‘Why’ or ‘How.’
Questions that you ask during data collection to gain an explanatory response will also be likely to start
with, or include, ‘Why’ or ‘How.’ The emphasis in explanatory research is to study a situation or a
problem in order to explain the relationships between variables.

Evaluative studies

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 The purpose of evaluative research is to find out how well something works. Research questions that seek
to evaluate answers are likely, to begin with, ‘How,’ or include ‘What,’ in the form of ‘To what extent.’
Evaluative research in business and management is likely to be concerned with assessing the effectiveness
of an organizational or business strategy, policy, program, initiative, or process. This may relate to any
area of the organization or business: for example, evaluating a marketing campaign, a personnel policy,
a costing strategy, the delivery of support service. As part of your evaluative study, you may also be
interested in making comparisons between events, situations, groups, places or periods, so that you are
interested in asking questions that include ‘Which,’ ‘When,’ ‘Who’ or ‘Where.’ Asking such questions
would help you to compare the effectiveness of, say, an advertising campaign in different locations or
between different groups of consumers. In this way, evaluative research allows you to assess performance
and to compare this. An evaluative study may produce a theoretical contribution where the emphasis is
placed on understanding not only ‘how effective’ something is, but also ‘why,’ and then comparing this
explanation to existing theory.

Combined studies

A research study may combine more than one purpose in its design. This may be achieved by the use of
mixed methods in the research design, to facilitate some combination of exploratory, descriptive,
explanatory, or evaluative research. Alternatively, a single method research design may be used in a way
that provides scope to facilitate more than one purpose.

Choosing a research strategy or strategies

The different research strategies

In this section, we turn our attention to your choice of research strategy (Figure 5.1). In general terms, a
strategy is a plan of action to achieve a goal. A research strategy may, therefore, be defined as a plan of
how a researcher will go about answering her or his research question. It is the methodological link
between your philosophy and subsequent choice of methods to collect and analyze data (Denzin and
Lincoln 2011).

Different research traditions have led to a number of possible research strategies, as we outlined earlier.
Particular research strategies may be associated with one of the philosophies discussed earlier and also a
deductive or inductive approach; however, we also recognized that there are often open boundaries
between research philosophies, research approaches, and research strategies. Similarly, a particular
research strategy should not be seen as inherently superior or inferior to any other. Consequently, we
believe that what is most important is not attaching labels for their own sake, or linking research elements
to try to be methodologically aloof. For us, the key to your choice of research strategy or strategies is that
you achieve a reasonable level of coherence throughout your research design which will enable you to
answer your particular research question(s) and meet your objectives. Your choice of research strategy
will, therefore, be guided by your research question(s) and objectives, the coherence with which these
link to your philosophy, research approach and purpose, and also to more pragmatic concerns including
the extent of existing knowledge, the amount of time and other resources you have available and access
to other sources of data. Finally, it must be remembered that these strategies should not be thought of as
being mutually exclusive.

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 Establishing the quality of the research design

Underpinning our discussion of research design is the issue of the quality of the research and its findings.
This is neatly expressed by Raimond (1993, p. 55) when he subjects findings to the ‘how do I know?’
test, ‘Will the evidence and my conclusions stand up to the closest scrutiny?’ This is why good research
design is important. This is aptly summarised by Rogers (1961; cited by Raimond 1993, p. 55): ‘scientific
methodology needs to be seen for what it truly is, a way of preventing me from deceiving myself in regard
to my creatively formed subjective hunches which have developed out of the relationship between me
and my material’.

A split often occurs at this point between positivist and interpretivist researchers. The former will use the
‘canons of scientific inquiry’ related to reliability and validity to assess the quality of their research or,
perhaps more pertinently, that of others. The latter either seek to adapt these terms to assess their research
or reject them as inappropriate to interpretivist studies (Guba and Lincoln 1989, 2005; Lincoln and Guba
1985; Lincoln et al. 2011).

Scientific canons of inquiry: reliability and validity

Reliability and validity are central to judgments about the quality of the research. Reliability refers to
replication and consistency. If a researcher can replicate an earlier research design and achieve the same
findings, then that research would be seen as being reliable. In essence, validity refers to the
appropriateness of the measures used, the accuracy of the analysis of the results, and generalisability of
the findings:

1. Do the measures being used in the research to assess the phenomenon being studied measure what
they are intended to – are they appropriate for their intended purpose?
2. Is the analysis of the results and the relationships advanced accurate?
3. What do the research findings represent: does the claim about how generalizable they are stand
up?

This first aspect of validity is sometimes termed measurement validity and is associated with different
types of validity designed to assess this intention. These include face validity, construct validity, content
validity, and predictive validity. The second aspect of validity refers to internal validity and the third
aspect to external validity, both discussed later in this section.

When considering reliability, sometimes a distinction is made between internal reliability and external
reliability. Internal reliability refers to ensuring consistency during a research project. This may be
achieved, where possible, by using more than one researcher within a research project to analyze data to
be able to evaluate the extent to which they agree about the data and its analysis. You may seek to ensure
consistency through the stages of your research project by writing memos to promote stability in the way
you code your data and analyze and interpret it. External reliability refers to whether your data collection
techniques and analytic procedures would produce consistent findings if they were repeated by you on
another occasion or if they were replicated by a different researcher. Ensuring reliability is not necessarily
easy. Unreliable research will also prove to be invalid since any error or bias will affect the results and
subsequent interpretation, and possibly cast doubt on the means to measure the phenomenon being

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 studied. These threats imply that you will need to be methodologically rigorous in the way you devise
and carry out your research to seek to avoid threatening the reliability of your findings and conclusions.
One key aspect is to ensure that your research process is thought through and evaluated and does not
contain ‘logic leaps and false assumptions.’ You would need to report each part of your work in a fully
transparent way to allow others to judge for themselves and to replicate your study if they wished to do
so.

Reliability is a key characteristic of research quality; however, while it is necessary, it is not sufficient by
itself to ensure good-quality research. As indicated earlier, the quality of research depends not only on its
reliability but also its validity. Internal validity is established when your research accurately
demonstrates a causal relationship between two variables. Your research findings would be seen as
invalid when a finding has been arrived at falsely or when a reported relationship is inaccurate. There are
a number of reasons that might threaten the internal validity of your research (Cook and Campbell 1979).
Research that produces invalid results and conclusions will also adversely affect its reliability since it will
be highly unlikely for a subsequent study to find the same false results and statistical relationships.
External validity is concerned with the question: can a study’s research findings be generalized to other
relevant settings or groups? For example, a corporate manager may ask, ‘Can the findings from the
research study in one organization in our corporation also be used to inform policy and practice in other
organizations in the group?

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