Fostering Quality in Qualitative Research: A List of Practical Strategies

Abstract

Qualitative research is an ongoing disruptive innovation in educational research all around the world. For a century or more, the world has predominantly been under the dominion of quantitative research. In fact, when qualitative research was introduced a few decades ago, it met strong resistance and repugnance, just as is the case of any groundbreaking innovation. Today, this opposition to the different way of thinking that qualitative research promotes still exists in many countries around the world. One of the reasons why scholars resist qualitative research is that they simply do not know what it is and what makes a good qualitative research study. This paper uses leading qualitative research texts to propose a list of criteria to evaluate the quality of a qualitative research paper.