Trustworthiness Criteria in Qualitative Research
Trustworthiness is a framework for evaluating the quality and rigor of qualitative research, developed by Lincoln and Guba (1985) as an alternative to quantitative criteria (internal validity, external validity, reliability, objectivity). The framework comprises five criteria: credibility (findings are accurate and grounded in data), transferability (findings apply to other contexts), dependability (findings are consistent and defensible), confirmability (findings reflect the data and participants' perspectives, not researcher bias), and authenticity (research reflects diverse viewpoints and promotes understanding). This framework has become standard for assessing qualitative research across disciplines and guides researchers in designing and reporting rigorous qualitative studies.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic Inquiry. SAGE Publications. · ISBN 978-0803924314
- Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing paradigms in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 105-117). SAGE Publications. · ISBN 978-0803950671
- Tracy, S. J. (2010). Qualitative quality: Eight big-tent criteria for excellent qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 16(10), 837-851. · DOI 10.1177/1077800410383121
- Whittemore, R., Chase, S. K., & Mandle, C. L. (2001). Validity in qualitative research. Qualitative Health Research, 11(4), 522-537. · DOI 10.1177/104973201129119299
Curated claims
Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.
This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.
Related methods
Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.