Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Assurance of Trustworthiness

Today is my dissertation day. I think it's the first Wednesday I've had without any other work-related commitments since May. Today has been very productive.

One method of assuring trustworthiness in my data analysis is to check in with the participants and seek their feedback on a part of the data analysis. In the case of my study, I wanted to make sure my main description of their work and their future aspirations was accurate. This is called a "member check."

I've been dreading this process due to the time it has taken me to analyze the interviews and write up the summaries. It's been just over two years since I conducted the first interview, and I honestly don't know if my contact information for the participants is still accurate or not. Fortunately Facebook has been a big help with this process, so yay for modern communication. I know I've written about this up here in the past.

Well, now that I finished Chapter 4, or the write-up of participants (did I MENTION I finished Chapter 4?), it was high time to get back in touch with the participants. I finally went ahead and contacted them, and I shared with each his or her interview summary. I did not share any of my reactions. Just my overall summary of the interview.

Glad that's over!

One has already responded, so I hope a few others follow suit soon. I don't expect to hear from all of them, but somewhere around half be nice.

Onto write a few more pages of Chapter 5 now. Deep breath. Trying to stay awake in the mid-afternoon is always a challenge for me.

1 comment:

lemming said...

Still following your progress - keep going.

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