Dependability

One of the challenges of working within a qualitative context is the variability of the environment. Through extensive literature reviews and experience in the context, a researcher can create a pretty good theoretical understanding of what the environment will be like and then design appropriate methodologies for studying it. Once the researcher is out in the field, he or she may find it to be quite different from what was expected. This could affect research procedures such as what types of interview questions are asked and how many interviews are conducted. Dependability in a qualitative study recognizes that the research context is evolving and that it cannot be completely understood a priori as a singular moment in time. Dependability accounts for these issues through relevant methodologies.

A catalyst for research is the desire to have the study affect theory and/or practice on a broad scale. [Page 209]This means that the results should be consistently linked to revealed data and that the findings should be an accurate expression of the meanings intended by the participants. For this to happen, there must be a research infrastructure to support a repetition or replication of the study that will have similar results. This condition, which is equivalent to reliability in quantitative research, requires that the researcher supply adequate and relevant methodological information to enable others to replicate the study. If a study design is so unique and specific that it cannot be replicated, the research will have limited impact beyond the context of the study and the dependability of the study design will be affected. An example of this would be interviewing the last two clients of a social services program that is ending. It would be very hard to repeat this study because there are no more clients and the program is completed.

Dependability also addresses the fact that the research context is open to change and variation. The researcher must be conscious of change and must track all of the nuances that differ from the design in the proposal. As part of this, the researcher should track the alterations to the research design made necessary by the changing context. This could include changes in methodology such as increasing the number of interviews required, tracking nonverbal cues as well as spoken text, including document analysis, increasing intercoder reliability by having more coders, and/or increasing contact time in the environment from 1 week to 2 weeks. Tracking this process is called an inquiry audit. An external agent will review the researcher's fieldnotes and log book to ensure that the various changes in the research design have both methodological and theoretical foundations and are linked to the revealed data. The transparency and relevancy of this process will increase the dependability of the study.