Auditing Quality of Research in Social Sciences

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• 作者：Sanne Akkerman ; Wilfried Admiraal ; Mieke Brekelmans and Heinze Oost
• 关键词：Audit ; quality procedure
• 刊名：Quality and Quantity
• 出版年：2008
• 出版时间：April, 2008
• 年：2008
• 卷：42
• 期：2
• 页码：257-274
• 全文大小：106.5 KB
• 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• 刊物主题：Social Sciences
  Methodology of the Social Sciences
  Social Sciences
  
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-7845

文摘

A growing body of studies involves complex research processes facing many interpretations and iterations during the analyses. Complex research generally has an explorative in-depth qualitative nature. Because these studies rely less on standardized procedures of data gathering and analysis, it is often not clear how quality was insured or assured. However, one can not easily find techniques that are suitable for such complex research processes to assess the quality of the study. In this paper, we discuss and present a suitable validation procedure. We first discuss how ‘diagnosing’ quality involves three generic criteria. Next, we present findings of previous research in possible procedures to assure the quality of research in social sciences. We introduce the audit procedure designed by Halpern [(1983) Auditing Naturalistic Inquiries: The Development and Application of a Model. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University] we found an appropriate starting point for a suitable procedure for quality judgment. Subsequently, we will present a redesign of the original procedure, with according guidelines for the researcher (the auditee) and for the evaluator of the quality of the study (the auditor). With that design, we aim to enable researchers to bring forward their explorative qualitative studies as stronger and more equally valuable to studies that can rely on standardized procedures.