Qualitative Research Rigour

Historically, qualitative research has been criticised for being less rigorous than quantitative research through not fulfilling quality standards such as objectivity, validity, and reliability. This leads to questions whether qualitative research can fulfil these specific markers of rigour, how it can come as close as possible to fulfilling them, and whether qualitative research should at all attempt to live up to these understandings of research quality. Responding to this debate, many methodologists have argued for the need of translating objectivity, validity, and reliability within qualitative research designs.

The discussion of rigour is a loaded one, among methodologists of all three research approaches (qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods) as well as mong qualitative researchers themselves. This course introduces different quality strategies for qualitative research to help students make informed decisions for improving their own empirical work and to better judge the rigour of empirical qualitative research done by others.

• University Students from Tier 1 Departments
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here

Students are expected to engage with the Moodle material (videos, task) before the live session on the 6th of February 2023. For this reason, the starting date is 30th January.

Number of sessions: 2

• To introduce different qualitative research rigour approaches

• To provide food for thought for students’ quality strategies within their own empirical work

• To assist students in assessing the rigour of a qualitative research paper (module task)

Online course start: 30 January (Moodle online material).

An optional assessment consisting of open-ended questions will be available at the end of the module. The assessment is not mandatory and only for those students whose department or faculty requires a grade. Students should get in touch with their department or faculty and let the lecturer know as soon as possible if an assessment is needed.

Click the "Booking" button panel on the left-hand sidebar (on a phone, this will be via a link called Booking/Availability near the top of the page).

Moodle is the 'Virtual Learning Environment' (VLE) that the SSRMP uses to deliver online courses.

SSRMP lecturers use Moodle to make teaching resources available before, during, and/or after classes, and to make announcements and answer questions.

For this reason, it is vital that all SSRMP students enrol onto and explore their course Moodle pages once booking their SSRMP modules via the UTBS, and that they do so before their module begins. Moodle pages for modules should go live around a week before the module commences, but some may be made visible to students, earlier.

For more information, and links to specific Moodle module pages, please visit our website