Strategies for trustworthiness

The reliability of the qualitative research can be reflected appropriately in terms of data collection results e.g. by exploring the implementation of the training in practice (De Villiers, 2005). The purpose of qualitative research is thus to generate justification of the method of data collection, which can be independent, so that another researcher could examine the same data in the same way and come to similar results or assumptions (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Lietz et al., 2006). Researchers have used different terms to stress the importance of rigor in qualitative research such as establishing ‘truth value’, ‘neutrality’, ‘applicability’ and ‘consistency’ (Guba and Lincoln, 1981; Sandelowski, 1986). Several schemes have been recognized in the literature in order to determine trustworthiness in qualitative research, which has similar principles to those of quantitative methods (Le Compte and Goetz, 1982; Rubin and Rubin, 2011). These schemes share the same aspects that comprise of credibility, transferability, dependability and the ability to be confirmed; and which parallel internal and external validity, reliability and objectivity in quantitative research, respectively (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). In order to be rigorous and transparent in this research project, these aspects were taken into consideration such as being clear in recording, classifying and discussing the methods of analysis.