One of Malinowski's outstanding contributions to the development of social anthropology was the introduction of much more intensive and much more sophisticated methods of field research than had previously been current in his subject. The many references to his ethnographic work in his diary show his industry . . . Only a fortnight [after his arrival in New Guinea] he noted two basic defects in his approach-he did not observe the people enough, and he did not speak their language. Both of these he tried hard to correct and his endeavor was the clue to all his later work (Firth 1967).
As we noted earlier, researchers trained in quantitative methods often have to readjust their sense of how to make judgments about the validity of qualitative inquiry. In section two of this manual we made an initial attempt to address some of these concerns. Below we provide some literature that more fully confronts questions of validity, reliability, and generalizability of qualitative research.
References:
Altheide, D. L., & Johnson, J. M. (1994). Criteria for Assessing Interpretive Validity in Qualitative Research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 485-599). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Becker, H. S. (1970). Sociological Work: Method and Substance. Chicago: Aldine.
Bernard, H. R., Killworth, P., Kronenfeld, D., & Sailer, L. (1984). The Problem of Informant Accuracy: The Validity of Retrospective Data. Annual Review of Anthropology, 13, 495-517.
Bernard, H. R., Pelto, P. J., Werner, O., Boster, J., Romney, A. K., Johnson, A., Ember, C. R., & Kasakoff, A. (1986). The Construction of Primary Data in Cultural Anthropology. Current Anthropology, 27(4), 382-396.
Johnson, A., & Johnson, O. R. (1990). From Quality to Quantity: On the Measurement Potential of Ethnographic Fieldnotes. In R. Sanjek (Ed.), Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology (pp. 161-186). Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press.
Maxwell, J. A. (1992). Understanding and Validity in Qualitative Research. Harvard Educational Review, 62(3), 279-300.
Mitchell, S. K. (1979). Interobserver Agreement, Reliability, and Generalizability of Data Collected in Observational Studies. Psychological Bulletin, 86(2), 376-390.
Tinsley, H. E., & Weiss, D. J. (1975). Interrater Reliability and Agreement of Subjective Judgments. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 22(4), 358-376.