Finding one’s way around various methods and guidelines for doing rigorous qualitative research: A comparison of four epistemological frameworks
Keywords:
qualitative research, case study, rigor, critical realism, pragmatic constructivismAbstract
The expanding popularity of qualitative research, and more particularly case study research, in the field of Information Systems, Organization and Management research, seems to have been accompanied by an increasing divergence in the forms that this research takes, and by recurrent criticisms concerning its rigor. This paper develops a heuristic framework for guiding the design of a rigorous case study depending on the research’s goal and epistemological framework, as well as for guiding its evaluation. It also highlights the fundamental reasons – namely the epistemological ones – for differences in the guidelines offered in the literature for conducting high quality case studies.
In agreement with numerous authors, we argue for contingent evaluation criteria. We supplement these authors’ works in two ways: (1) we consider various epistemological frameworks that do not appear in the classifications that they use, especially including critical realism and pragmatic constructivism; (2) we propose a set of contingent criteria to be used as a heuristic device for critically and knowledgeably building rigorous case studies within different epistemological traditions.
References
Cher Régis,
Nous sommes heureuses de pouvoir soumettre aujourd’hui cette version de notre texte aménagée pour le lectorat de SIM et corrigée par une éditrice américaine spécialisée avec laquelle j’ai l’habitude de travailler.
Je n'ai pas compris ce que vous entendez par liste structurée de références. Est-ce différent de la liste des références située à la fin de l'article ?
Restant dans l’attente des commentaires des évaluateurs,
nous te souhaitons une bonne rentrée à Montpellier
Amicalement
Marie-José et Catherine
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The author bears the responsibility for checking whether material submitted is subject to copyright or ownership rights (e.g. figures, tables, photographs, illustrations, trade literature and data). The author will need to obtain permission to reproduce any such items, and include these permissions with their final submission.
It is our policy to ask all contributors to transfer for free the copyright in their contribution to the journal owner. There are two broad reasons for this:
- ownership of copyright by the journal owner facilitates international protection against infringement of copyright, libel or plagiarism;
- it also ensures that requests by third parties to reprint or reproduce a contribution, or part of it, in either print or electronic form, are handled efficiently in accordance with our general policy which encourages dissemination of knowledge within the framework of copyright.
In conformity with the French law, the author keeps the 'moral rights' related to the article:
- The 'authorship right': It is the author's right to have his name associated with each publication and exploitation of the article.
- The 'integrity right': It can be claimed by the author if he finds that during an exploitation, his work has been distorted (cutting, reassembly...).
