Post #3- Validity and Triangulation

 

It’s been a busy week, of family with flu, family in hospice, and what seems like non-stop facilitating of student projects, not to mention a rare treat of a date night seeing Mark Dion at UNI. I struggled to finish the readings this week, but look forward to finishing them.

 

I’ve realized that instead of having too little data, I have an ABUDNANCE of data. Over the last 3 weeks, I’ve attempted to videotape my morning and afternoon meetings for my case study project. The first week, I pushed the wrong button, twice. The second week the first meeting taped fine, the second meeting cut out ½ way through from an overheated motor. This Wednesday I finally captured a rather unique interview, a presentation of ideas in progress by the students to 4 architects who gave feedback in surprising ways.

 

I enjoyed reading about the different definitions of validation in the Creswell chapter. The thesaurus of words that alternately could be used reveals how wide interpretations vary; credibility, authenticity, transferability, dependability, confirmation, reliability, objectivity, agreement, understandings, plausibility, the list goes on…

 

As validation relates to this research, I see it validation more in terms of the word understanding. The inevitable subjectivity of this research leads me to think of validation in the more naturalistic terms described in the book. I laughed at the definition of “Face validation, [as a “click of recognition’ and a ‘yes, of course,’ instead of ‘yes, but’ experience” (Kidder, 1982, p. 56)]. Basically, as I interpreted that is, validation can be as simple as recognizing universal or obvious truths.

 

I think that through the process of coding and triangulation, my research will be validated. By identifying similar themes and ideas throughout the ABUDNANCE of data from more than three data types and months of instances, the work will be better understood.