How can I expand or advance the conversation by new insight or perspective?
I agree with the idea that the ability to replicate a study is critical in being able to trust its conclusions. This is much more difficult in qualitative research, given that such a small, highly specific population is being observed by the researcher. But even quantitative studies face a so-called replication crisis. When research papers are published, they describe their methodologyWhen another research team tries to conduct a study based on the original to see if they find the same result, thats an attempted replication (Piper, 2014, par.4). But one attempt to replicate studies from the popular scientific journals Nature and Science led to the conclusion that only 13 of the 21 results looked at could actually be replicated by outsiders, casting the findings in doubt as generalizable to outside of the specific study population (Piper, 2014). For larger-scale scientific studies that are used to set public policy or, for example to validate drug studies or specific treatments, this is particularly troubling,...
In quantitative results, the size of the sampling, a
research design which does not filter out adequate numbers of variables, and other concerns can ultimately impact the ability of other authors to replicate a study. Regardless, as you note, it is...
…in terms of how the inductive evidence being collected, in terms of allowing subjects to speak for themselves, and in terms of the researchers being self-critical about biases they may have.
Most qualitative studies in particular also attempt to accumulate additional evidence from a variety of sources. They may even use multiple researchers, to add multiple subjective perspectives, to ensure a fuller range of observations are offered, from which to draw conclusions (add a quantitative dimension like a survey in mixed methods research). However, even though qualitative research strives to be scientific in nature, it is not necessarily positivist in perspective like quantitative research, although qualitative findings may in future may be used to design quantitative research studies to test conclusions in a more objective…
