Criteria for qualitative research in psychology

Abstract

This paper, designed for supervisors of qualitative research projects, and addressed to students to enable them to think through how they may be evaluated, reviews some problems in the formulation of criteria for qualitative research in the discipline and issues that are important for the generation and paradigmatic framing of open flexible criteria. The guidelines that are presented here are developed as an attempt to explicate the parameters of criteria, rather than closing down future innovative work. Ten key points are elaborated 'under erasure' (that the study should be objective, valid, reliable, neutral, confirmed, definitive, established, coherent, accessible and psychological) and core principles of 'apprenticeship', 'scholarship' and 'innovation' are designed to open the way for good research to go beyond these criteria.