The DOI matches its Crossref record; 5 of the 5 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Evaluating Interpretive Inquiry: Reviewing the Validity Debate and Opening the Dialogue
Abstract
Designing and carrying out effective and valid research are the desired goals of all researchers, and demonstrating the trustworthiness of one's dissertation research is a requirement for all doctoral candidates. For qualitative researchers, reaching the desired goal and meeting the requirement of trustworthiness become particularly problematic due to the considerable debate about what it means to do valid research in the field of qualitative inquiry. This article reviews the various approaches to the validity problem in the hope of turning this debate into a dialogue. Validity is traced from its origins in the realist ontology and foundational epistemology of quantitative inquiry to its reformulations within the lifeworld ontology and non-foundationalism of interpretive human inquiry. Various recent qualitative approaches to validity are considered, and interpretive reconfigurations of validity are reviewed. Interpretive approaches to validity are synthesized as ethical and substantive procedures of validation.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Handbook of Qualitative Research
Crozier, G., Denzin, N., & Lincoln, Y. (1994) · British Journal of Educational Studies · doi:10.2307/3121684 · Cited by 26,666
Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective
Haraway, D. (1988) · Feminist Studies · doi:10.2307/3178066 · Cited by 18,364
Understanding and Validity in Qualitative Research
Maxwell, J. (1992) · Harvard Educational Review · doi:10.17763/haer.62.3.8323320856251826 · Cited by 2,951 · cited 2×
“Similarly, Wakefield (1995) argues for a “humble realism” (p. 17), and Maxwell (1992) argues for a “critical realism” (p. 283).”
BackgroundPhenomenological Research Methods
Polkinghorne, D. E. (1989) · Existential-Phenomenological Perspectives in Psychology · doi:10.1007/978-1-4615-6989-3_3 · Cited by 1,800
Fertile Obsession: Validity After Poststructuralism
Lather, P. (1993) · The Sociological Quarterly · doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.1993.tb00112.x · Cited by 937 · cited 7×
“Lather (1993) uses the labels rhizomatic and voluptuous validity to describe the capacity for the work to engender new connections and go beyond what is given.”
BackgroundMethodInfluential
Cited by
Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches
Lewis, S. (2015) · Health Promotion Practice · doi:10.1177/1524839915580941 · Cited by 22,105
O.Nyumba, T., Wilson, K., Derrick, C. J., & Mukherjee, N. (2018) · Methods in Ecology and Evolution · doi:10.1111/2041-210x.12860 · Cited by 2,619
“…checking affords the focus group discussion participants the opportunity to check for accuracy and resonance with their experiences (Doyle, 2007), the process has been criticised based on epistemological and methodological challenges as outlined by Sandelowski (1993), Morse (1994) and Angen (2000).”
Choose Your Method: A Comparison of Phenomenology, Discourse Analysis, and Grounded Theory
Starks, H., & Brown Trinidad, S. (2007) · Qualitative Health Research · doi:10.1177/1049732307307031 · Cited by 2,528
Validity in qualitative research
Whittemore, R., Chase, S. K., & Mandle, C. L. (2001) · Qualitative Health Research · doi:10.1177/104973201129119299 · Cited by 2,144
Varpio, L., Ajjawi, R., Monrouxe, L. V., O'Brien, B. C., & Rees, C. E. (2017) · Medical Education · doi:10.1111/medu.13124 · Cited by 1,028
Metadata
- Authors
- Angen, M. J.
- Venue
- Qualitative Health Research
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2000-05-01
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 378-395
- ISSN
- 1049-7323 (ISSN-L)
- 0000-0000
- OpenAlex
- W2131259125
- Cited by
- 998
- References
- 5
- FWCI
- 21.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Evaluating Interpretive Inquiry: Reviewing the Validity Debate and Opening the Dialogue. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1177/104973200129118516
- The paper
- Angen, M. J. (2000). Evaluating Interpretive Inquiry: Reviewing the Validity Debate and Opening the Dialogue. Qualitative Health Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/104973200129118516
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.