Reliability and Validity in Research

Taken from http://readingcraze.com/index.php/reliability-validity-research/

Reliability and Validity in Research

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Post 228

“Have you ever read an article that made you think, ‘How did they come to that conclusion?’ Or one that made you think, ‘How is that accurate?’ or ‘What data supports their findings’” (Laureate Education, 2015). If “research is systematic inquiry” (Merriam, 1991), then one –as a researcher- can start a project to validate other authors’ conclusions, refute or agree with the accuracy in their studies, and gather more data that can support their findings, too. A twofold way to ascertain the truth about research discoveries is by means of validity and reliability.

“The principles of validity and reliability are fundamental cornerstones of the scientific method. Together, they are the core of what is accepted as scientific proof” (Validity and Reliability, n.d.). Validity can be characterized as the unit of measurement in research that helps the investigator a) to design the process of inquiry and b) to decide how the results are analyzed. For Laureate Education (2015), “valididy is defined as the degree to which a test, study, or instrument measures what it is intended to measure. Validity is concerned with the study’s success in measuring what the researchers intended to measure.” Validity, then, “encompasses the entire experimental concept and establishes whether the results obtained meet all the requirements of the scientific research method” (Validity and Reliability, n.d.). Validity in qualitative research, e.g., can be attained by means of triangulation, and in quantitative research, through the stability of data and its replicability of the experiment.

What about reliability? “The idea behind reliability is tht any significant results must be more than a one-off finding and be inherently repeatable” (Validity and Reliability, n.d.). Other inquiriers must be able to carry out basically the same kind of experimentation, under the same repeatable conditions, to come up with “indentical” results. For Laureate Education (2015), reliability needs to be “defined as the extend to which an experment, survery, observation, test, or any other measuring procedure consistently produces the same results.” Thus, “when conducting research, it is essential to consider whether the data sources as well as conclusions are valid and reliable” (Laureate Education, 2015). As Merriam (1991) has posited it, “every researcher wants to contribute knowledge that is believable and trustworthy.” If both conditions are met, the researcher then is bound to have a valid and reliable research project with valid and reliable measurements, findings, and conclusions.

Since it has been my concern of how feedback is carried out in higher education in the ELT Program Universidad Latina has, I have been closely paying attention to an article writen by Nicol, Thomson, & Breslin (2014), who carried out a study on how peer feedback in the UK. To show the authors’ validity and reliability in their study, we will examine certain areas pertaining both constructs regarding believability and trustworthiness.

For Nicol, Thomson, & Breslin (2014), “peer review is a reciprocal process whereby students produce feedback reviews on the work of peers and receive reviews from peers on their own work.” What did the authors do to achieve both reliability and validity in their study?

1) The authors stated the importance of their research question using relevant and current research as support, all of this coming from their literature review that was carried out chronologically.

2) The writers described how their study was conducted and included a vast array of descriptions of the students who got involved in their study, the kinds of resources that they employed, the assessment instruments applied to the participants, the method used to collect their data, and how all this information was analyzed.

3) The essayists reported results in a responsible and ethical fashion. Though no real statement of personal biases held by the three authors, individually or collectively, are mentioned, findings are presented without deviating from their research question.

4) The writers came up with sound conclusions based on their research findings and pointed out other areas of potential research studies in the future.

Though this may sound as a trite exercise for a new researcher, As a simplistic exercise prior to writing a research proposal, it is always a sensible endeavor to view in detail how experienced researcher present their projects of inquiry. Nicol, Thomson, & Breslin’s (2014) research project is a good example to follow when consider publishing your findings. No doubt that there are many more samples that can be retrieved from recent publications that can be used as a way to compare, in terms of research structure, what you are doing. May all of us interested in research get to find the best model and methodology to explain what happens in our teaching surroundings.