Blackwell Reference Online

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Authenticity criteria are criteria for determining the goodness, reliability, validity, and rigor of qualitative research. They may be contrasted with trustworthiness criteria on foundational grounds. Trustworthiness criteria were developed in response to conventional quantitative and statistical concerns for rigor, including internal validity, external validity (or generalizability), reliability (or replicability), and objectivity. Each of the four dimensions of trustworthiness parallels each of the four rigor dimensions of quantitative methods. Trustworthiness criteria, therefore, may be said to be foundational because they respond to the foundations of conventional scientific research. Authenticity criteria emerged in response to the call for criteria which were responsive not to conventional quantitative research, but rather to the reformulated philosophical premises of phenomenological, constructivist, or interpretivist inquiry. Such criteria were neither proposed nor self-evident. Attempts to tease out such criteria resulted in five proposals for judging the fidelity of phenomenological or interpretivist qualitative research to its underlying philosophical principles or axioms. Those five proposals included fairness and balance, ontological authenticity, educative authenticity, catalytic authenticity, and tactical authenticity. The mandate that interpretivist (or constructivist) ... log in or subscribe to read full text