Validity, Transgressive

Transgressive validity is a category of validity qualitative researchers have developed in recent decades to reconceptualize what constitutes “good” research and “legitimate” knowledge and the criteria used to evaluate that research. “Validity” is a common tool researchers use to ensure their methods examine what they intend to examine. Unlike traditional forms of validity, transgressive validity is a technique aimed as much to challenge traditional authorizing criteria, to stimulate thinking about how knowledge is created, and to generate new research practices as it is intended to evaluate whether transgressive research accomplishes its goals. Historically, researchers have used particular [Page 927]techniques to ensure their findings correspond with the social phenomenon studied. As the landscape of qualitative research has expanded, researchers have found conventional forms of validity inappropriate for evaluating their studies and have developed alternative criteria for analyzing how knowledge is produced and legitimated. Feminist methodologist Patti Lather includes the categories of ironic, paralogic, rhizomatic, and voluptuous in her poststructuralist conceptualizing of transgressive validity; other forms that curriculum scholars use to expand accepted validity categories include catalytic, crystallization, communicative, and pragmatic.

The criteria researchers use to determine whether research is valid differs based on which theories guide the research, the methods used, and the research goals. Historically, qualitative researchers working within conventional research traditions have adapted quantitative validity criteria to qualitative ends. These techniques include triangulation (originally meaning multiple methods but expanding to include multiple data sources, theories, and researchers), face and construct validity, the reduction of researcher bias, and systematic data collection. These techniques remain common today. However, the 1970s ushered in a significant period termed the “crisis of representation” in which scholars began questioning long-accepted beliefs about knowledge, truth, and the capacity for research to capture the complexity of the social world. This “crisis” spurred a rich intellectual ferment that led to new forms of research, new ways of representing research, and new methods for legitimating that research, including validity. Some scholars have argued that the quantitative origins of “validity” necessitate abandoning the concept to develop other methods of establishing credibility. Others maintain the term conveys a degree of rigor worth preserving and expanding.

Transgressive validity offers researchers alternatives to what some see as fruitless quests to seek correspondence between “research findings” and “reality” and prompts the development of other methods for conducting and legitimating research. For example, ironic validity refers to how effective research is in casting doubt on the possibility of representing the complexity of the social world. Research gains legitimacy if researchers simultaneously highlight how they make meaning of the curriculum or classrooms under study while demonstrating that meaning is partial and unreliable. In this view, the researcher might use multiple textual forms to interpret the object of inquiry and convey that, ultimately, it can never be represented beyond that role. In contrast, paralogic validity, drawn from the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard's work, refers to how effectively research resists the tyranny of consensus and highlights differences, uncertainties, and contradictions. In this transgressive form, multiple interpretations of data that emphasize the complexity of meaning making and undermine the researcher as final authority might enhance credibility.

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