Goals

After reading this article, you will be able to do the following:

• Recognize trust’s importance in research.
• Identify strategies to manage trustworthiness threats.
• Explain the member-checking process.

Introduction

The past few decades were marked by emerging technology that made information available to anyone with internet access. However, it has also brought a time where misinformation and fake news are present and sometimes hard to distinguish from facts. Such mistrust has also affected research. Now, more than ever, trustworthiness in studies is essential. In this article, we’ll address trustworthiness in the research process.

The term trustworthiness not only speaks to a study’s rigor, but also to the data-confidence level and the methods that you, the researcher, use to ensure that you produce a sound study. While there is uncertainty as to whether trustworthiness is attainable, ethnographers agree that it is established when their findings closely reflect the meaning their study informants describe (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

Why is Trust Important in Research?

Imagine the confusion and mistrust if we could not distinguish fact from fiction. As information junkies, we spend most waking hours conducting research—this could be as simple as trying to find a cheesecake recipe or as in-depth as learning about the women Freedom Riders. We are always searching for answers, and we want them right now. The internet allows us to readily access information, where we believe with certainty that we will find answers to our most burning questions without delay. In this era, by logging onto our computers to readily access information, we assume that once we enter a search word in Google or any other search engine, the returned results are reliable and trustworthy. Relying on this information implies that it is accurate, sound, founded on integrity, and supported by evidence.

For instance, consider a scenario where you want to find Utah’s kidnapping statute. Enter that phrase in Google and perhaps one site that pops up is the Utah State Legislature’s URL: https://le.utah.gov/. You go to this website and type kidnapping in the keyword search bar. Once you have clicked Enter, notice that a few House Bills (HB) and Senate Bills (SB) pop up—instantly, you have answers at your fingertips. You trust that whatever kidnapping statutes or bills you find must be factual because it is a government site. Do you stop to question whether this information is trustworthy? No! We automatically trust the source because why would the government provide misleading and inaccurate information on its official site? State Legislatures create legislation that becomes law. Members are elected representatives who consider matters their governor or fellow members introduce. This description illustrates why we would not mistrust information retrieved from our Legislature’s website.

Trustworthiness in Ethnographic Research

It is no different in ethnographic research. Research is a way to provide answers to inquiring minds. Tapping away at the computer’s keyboard, we are busy trying to learn more about one cultural group or another. Trustworthiness is most important, and we should be able to consider any finding from such research as credible. The findings should be so trusted that when ethnographic research is criticized, you as an ethnographer, can confidently say, “Yes, consider this source.”

As ethnographers, we research many topics and believe that study results are trustworthy. We never assume that anything found in research is misleading because we believe conducting research is a reliable, fact-finding, and trustworthy process. For example, if you as an ethnographer are conducting research on first-generation Jamaican college students who are studying criminal justice at Salt Lake Community College (SLCC), you must ensure that your informant’s shared information is not only credible, but that you have accurately captured the information as shared in their ordinary everyday language. As such, you must do your due diligence to ensure that information junkies logging onto their computers searching various search engines, virtual libraries, and research platforms get their questions answered, can trust what you produced, and feel confident that your informant’s record is accurate.

How to Eliminate Bias

Ethnographic research as well as other qualitative research findings must be trustworthy. This standard must be met—there is no way around it. As you produce your research results, you will find that trustworthiness does not happen as naturally as you think. It is a direct result of rigorous scholarship. Meaning or truth comes into existence when your informants engage in and out of the realities in their world during the research process (Ab Rashid, Mohamed, Nor, Shamsuddin, Fazry, Rahman, Yunus & Anwar, 2016). Although subjective, trustworthiness is a shared reality, where both you and your informant find commonality in lived experiences as you both navigate the research process. This is how you get closer to meeting the trustworthiness standard, and in turn, eliminate bias.

Subjectivity: A Threat to Trustworthiness

Subjectivity, on one hand, allows for authentic findings as information is told from a first-person perspective. On the other hand, because the findings are from the informant’s perspective, there is concern that maybe you should take those findings with a grain of salt. Meaning, you might have to embark on an additional fact-finding mission to corroborate what your informant shared with you during the ethnographic interview. For example, imagine that you are conducting an interview with juvenile detention youth, and you share an experience about a time you got in trouble when you were younger. Instantly, these youths connect with you because they find commonality in the experience you shared. The experience, as narrated by you, is subjective as you are recounting that experience’s details based on your memory, perception, and understanding of how the events occurred. A possible question that could arise is, “Did the events occur in the exact sequence as shared?” This questioning type suggests there is a threat to truth value in the information exchanged, proving that there is a thin line between subjectivity and untrustworthiness.

How to Attain Reliability and Validity in Ethnographic Research?

In qualitative research, ethnographers might impose their personal beliefs as well as interests throughout all the research-process stages, which can cause the researcher’s subjective voice to dominate the informant’s voice. For this reason, a common criticism directed at qualitative investigation is that it fails to follow the traditional research reliability and validity rules, which are principles of external and internal validity and reliability that rely solely on scientific evidence (LeCompte & Goetz, 1982). Many critics are unwilling to accept qualitative research’s trustworthiness; however, appropriate frameworks that ensure rigor have existed for several years (Shenton, 2004). To ensure that your ethnographic findings are reliable and valid, your informants’ voices, though subjective, must be the loudest. Only your informants’ experiences should guide the study, not your thoughts, opinions, or experiences.

Member Checking

Member checking—also known as respondent or participant validation—is the process where you return your research to your informants to reduce researcher bias in the findings. This research could be either the interview that you conducted as a verbatim transcript or the field notes or data that you analyzed (Birt, Scott, Cavers, Campbell & Walter, 2016).

You can return research to your informants in the following diverse ways:

Your primary focus in conducting member checking is to explore your qualitative research’s credibility. Lincoln and Guba (1985) recommend conducting member-checking techniques to enhance qualitative research’s rigor and scholarship. They also propose that ethnographic research credibility is necessary because we must represent accurately the informant or study phenomenon’s descriptions and interpretations.

Let us look at the third example in the member-checking table above. During the member-checking focus group, you can reassure your first-generation Hispanic student informants that you are committed to producing credible information and you aim to accurately interpret and describe their experiences as expressed in their ordinary language.

Checking In Is Important

Checking in with your informants throughout the ethnographic study is important to ensure that you and your informants adhere to proposed protocols (Loh, 2013). Remind them about the study’s guidelines, motives, purpose, and expectations, and allow them to ask questions so that they are not interacting with you based on assumptions. Also, share those protocols with your informants and explain them in detail. Checking in prevents assumptions from replacing facts.

For example, in the second member-checking table above, as you record the female gang youths’ interview disclosures, you might change the ordinary language they used. Immediately, you must let them know about this change and your reasons for it. You cannot change information, especially language, and deem the findings to be of true value. The way the female gang youth interpret the study may be different from your interpretation; therefore, it is important for you to conduct member checking.

In the female gang youth example, member checking creates an opportunity for you to elaborate on your analysis and to detect study errors. Allow your female gang youth informants to give you feedback about how you have analyzed and interpreted their experiences and include their feedback in your study. Member checking is a necessary step to reinforce the principle that trustworthy information is important in ethnographic research; it ensures that you produce a quality study and guarantees that the wider research community will accept your findings. By member checking, you encourage your female gang youth informants to respond accurately to you, and in doing so, your recorded information can be accepted as trustworthy.

Managing Trustworthiness Threats

Lincoln and Guba identified three strategies to manage ethnographic research trustworthiness threats. The strategies are credibility, transferability, and dependability. These strategies were created to attain trustworthiness in ethnographic research as compared to the traditional research notions of internal validity, external validity, and reliability (Collier-Reed et al. 2009).

Strategy One: Credibility

Credibility is the fit between the informants’ views and how the ethnographer represents them (Nowell, Norris, White & Moules, 2017). When the female gang youth informants review your findings, there should be a fit between what they shared and how they feel about how you represented those views and feelings. Credibility also asks, “How compatible are the study’s findings with your informants’ reality?” In essence, “How accurate are you in interpreting and describing the female gang youths’ reality and experiences?” As you spend time with these females throughout the research cycle, trustworthiness becomes heightened (Stahl & King, 2020).

Strategy Two: Transferability

Transferability refers to how applicable findings are from one context to another, or how possible it is for researchers to transfer findings—lessons from somewhere else—to their own site (Stahl & King, 2020). The question is, “From an interview with Utah State Prison transgender females, how possible is it to transfer their housing-issues findings to another state’s prison with the same target audience in the same study area?” Transfer is possible when thick descriptions organically portray experiences that apply to another’s situation of others. Thick descriptions include information that is stipulated and detailed about the field-work site, data-collection methods, study period, and important study informants. Transfer applications rely on these descriptions to determine the degree to which the study is transferable to another context (Stahl & King, 2020).

Strategy Three: Dependability

Dependability requires that your research process is well-documented, traceable, and logical. If your research can be audited, then you have demonstrated dependability. If your research is under audit, it should prove traceable and logical based on the research techniques and methods that you employed. Pursue consistent research methods. Ask “How can I as the ethnographer determine that my findings can be replicated if my informants and context were the same?” (Nowell et al. 2017). “Would your findings be the same if you interviewed transgender males or if you conducted your research in New York instead of Utah?” Dependability is the trust in trustworthy, and it unfolds over time between you and your informants.

Conclusion

Trustworthiness in ethnographic research is one way in which researchers persuade both themselves and consumers that their research findings can be trusted and, thus, worthy of attention (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). It is a necessary criterion and rational choice for researchers who are concerned about their research’s usefulness and acceptability (Nowell et al. 2017). As ethnographic research becomes more widely valued, it is important for you to conduct your research in a rigorous manner to yield meaningful, useful, and positive outcomes. For your research to be accepted as trustworthy, you must prove that the data analysis that you conducted was done in a consistent and precise way through recording, systematizing, and disclosing your analytical methods. You must do this so your reader and consumer can determine that your ethnographic research processes are credible. In the end, your study’s integrity and usefulness depends on how you conducted your research, its transparency, and its ethnographic truth value.

Practice

In this activity, you will consider different scenarios and explore key questions related to establishing trustworthiness in research findings, and identify the ethical implications of conducting research in these contexts.

1. Spend about 10-15 minutes reading each scenario carefully. Focus on the cultural groups and challenges described in each scenario. In that process, note your thoughts for each question—consider any common themes or challenges that emerge across the scenarios and reflect on potential strategies or approaches that you could employ to enhance trustworthiness in each context. Reflection questions will help you apply what you have learned after reading this article.
2. Write about the implications of sharing your research findings. Or write about collecting data in a trustworthy manner. Summarize the key takeaways and lessons learned from this activity.

Scenario One

Cultural Groups Affected by a Water Shortage in Utah.

An ethnographer is conducting research on cultural groups in Utah who are affected by a water shortage. These community members have expressed concerns about their access to clean water and the shortage’s impact on their daily lives.

Reflection Questions

1. How can the ethnographer convince community members that their findings are worthy of attention and will contribute to addressing their water-shortage concerns?
2. How can the ethnographer ensure to accurately interpret the community members’ language and to capture the truest meanings of what they have shared? How can the ethnographer involve community members in validating that their community’s experience is represented accurately?

Scenario Two

Native Communities Misrepresented in the Media.

An ethnographer aims to shed light on how native communities are misrepresented in the media and wants to understand how misrepresentation impacts the community’s cultural identity and self-perception.

Reflection Questions

1. How can the ethnographer establish their finding’s credibility and demonstrate that they accurately represent the native community’s experiences and perspectives?
2. How can the ethnographer ensure their findings are transferable, making them applicable not only to the specific native community they studied but also to other contexts where native communities face similar misrepresentation challenges?

Scenario Three

People of Color Profiled as Criminals.

An ethnographer investigates people of color who have been profiled unjustly as criminals and their experiences. The aim is to highlight racial profiling’s harmful effects on individuals and communities.

Reflection Questions

1. How can the ethnographer ensure their research findings are dependable, making sure that if the study is replicated with the same participants and context, other researchers will obtain similar findings?
2. How can the ethnographer demonstrate their study finding’s neutrality, ensuring that how they have interpretated and represented the participants is solely based on the participants’ objective reality and is not influenced by the researcher’s motivations, biases, or perspectives?

Scenario Four

Low-Income Families Denied Access to Healthcare.

An ethnographer explores low-income families who are denied access to adequate healthcare and their experiences. The study aims to raise awareness about healthcare disparities and to advocate for improved access and services.

Reflection Questions

1. How can the ethnographer establish that their research findings are trustworthy and credible, ensuring that their findings are perceived as reliable and trustworthy by both the low-income families and the wider community?
2. How can the ethnographer demonstrate consistent research methods to establish that their findings are dependable? How do they document and present information in a well-documented, traceable, and logical manner?

References

Ab Rashid, Radzuwan., Mohamed, S., Nor, S., Shamsuddin, S. N., Fazry, M., Rahman, A., Yunus, K. & Anwar, O. M. (2016). Considering philosophical underpinnings and ensuring the trustworthiness of an ethnographic research: A personal choice. Man in India, 96, 3201-3209.

Birt L, Scott S, Cavers D, Campbell C, Walter F. (2016). Member checking: A tool to enhance trustworthiness or merely a nod to validation? Qualitative Health Research, 26(13):1802-1811. doi:10.1177/1049732316654870

Collier-Reed, B. I., Ingerman, A., & Berglund, A. (2009). Reflections on trustworthiness in phenomenographic research: Recognizing purpose, context and change in the process of research. Education as Change, 13(2) 339-355.

Le Compte, M.D. & Goetz, J.P. (1982). Problems of reliability and validity in ethnographic research. Review of Educational Research, 52 (1), 31-60

Lincoln, Y. S. & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications.

Loh, J. (2013). Inquiry into issues of trustworthiness and quality in narrative studies: A perspective. The Qualitative Report, 18(33), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2013.1477

Nowell, L. S., Norris, J. M., White, D. E., & Moules, N. J. (2017). Thematic analysis: Striving to meet the trustworthiness criteria. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406917733847

Shenton, A. K. (2004). Strategies for ensuring trustworthiness in qualitative research projects. Education for Information, 22, 63-75.
Stahl, N. & King, J. (2020). Expanding approaches for research: Understanding and using trustworthiness in qualitative research. 44. 26-28.