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Abstract: Many qualitative researchers are faced with the everlasting question of generalizability of their findings, especially when trying to support their research in front of quantitative researchers. Despite this state of affairs qualitative researchers rarely discuss generalizability of their data and argue that a deeper understanding of the phenomena is the goal of their endeavour and not statistical generalization. Furthermore, quantitative researchers usually dismiss the results of qualitative research based on the lack of generalizability. I argue that this state of affairs is a crude simplification of reality based on either a misconception about what qualitative data is or on a misconception of the aspects of qualitative data analysis that lead to generalizability like: the purpose of the research, the sampling method, the data analysis method and the coding strategy. The paper suggests that discussions on generalizability should become the standard for reporting qualitative report if the research question is phrased to demand a general answer.
Keywords: qualitative research; generalization; external validity; non-probabilistic sampling; coding; grounded theory.
What is generalization
The most important standards of research are validity and reliability. Still, the definitions of validity and reliability are sometimes considered to differ for qualitative and quantitative research. In quantitative research, reliability is the "consistency of a measure of a concept" (Bryman 2008: 140), while validity is a measure of "whether an indicator (or set of indicators) that is devised to gauge a concept really measures that concept" (Bryman 2008:151). Generalizability is also known as external validity (Bryman 2008; Chelcea 2001). Also, the distinction between external and internal reliability and external and internal validity may be adapted to the purposes of qualitative research. While external reliability refers to the replicability of a qualitative study, internal reliability refers to inter-rater reliability if multiple coders or observers are used for qualitative coding or observation. On the other hand, external validity is used to refer to the degree to which a research is generalizable to other settings, while internal validity is concerned with the link between theory and observation or coding. Some researchers use the term validity with the meaning of internal validity (see for example Hanson 2008: 107) while others use the term reliability with the meaning of external reliability (see for example Potter and Levine-Donnerstein...