Was working on my final draft for my research proposal and had the following reflection about the issue of Validity in qualitative research. Since I am aiming for transformational changes in our strong military culture, and am using individual Voice (narratives, stories , interviews etc) as the basis for describing the current situation and desirable paths for change, the concern for Validity comes not from individual stories per se, but in the comparison between my entire dataset and the “Word as it really is” in the eyes of decision-makers.
My sense is also that the quality and insights that arise from individual narrative Voice will have an authenticity that must be considered valid as a data point. The validity concern I now perceive as being a function of having the narratives and stories cast broadly and fairly enough that they represent something that will be seen as truth. The threat to validity from individual narrative will come from assertions that the stories are not representative of the whole, and not from questions of individual perspectives, which will be honored as a matter of course.
In other words, a decision-maker who may not like the reports from the street may try to say
“…all the stories you report are “True” and valid, because they are perceptions, Mr Long, but you have not covered the whole topic/school/population to give a fair reading of the Real Truth, s we will persist in our ways. Thank you for your interest in national defense…”
So, now it is clear to me that I must look to answer the issues of Validity from a methodological and sampling perspective, and not just from the rigor of individual data point collection.