Action Research Reports: Is Your Project Valid, Credible, or Reliable?

At the end of your action research project, or even as a mid-way formative assessment, you will need to review your data and analyze what you have actually done. This article is the last of five that describe the process for analyzing research, analyzing action research, and reporting on it. Analysis and reporting are alchemical processes through which the researcher takes a close look at all that he has done and from that reflection emerges a completely new version of what happened. Whether that new incarnation of work is compelling or important to others, and to what extent, has a lot to do with how deeply you can justify whether your work is valid, credible, or trustworthy to others. This article is the last in a series of five that leads you to reflect on your project and then what it takes to report on it.

Research practice is typically measured against standards of validity, credibility, and reliability. Together and make the argument that your findings and conclusions are correct, and your report becomes compelling to your audience. Valid, credible and reliable are concepts that apply beyond the research community, although they have a very specific meaning within a research paradigm. Now, you must ask yourself whether or not you can make a claim for your work against those three standards.

Validity

AR has two general objectives: 1) to increase personal and community knowledge about a topic of this study and 2) to show results of improvements or movements towards a defined purpose. The extent to which the practitioner can demonstrate these two objectives determines the validity of their claims. Your study may be valid in one area but not the other, as discussed earlier in this chapter when we separate your personal results from those of your practitioner. Herr and Anderson go on to discuss various types of validity, each of which is a claim you could make in your final report.

Get out validity is whether or not it succeeded in reaching its purpose.

Process Validity looks at whether you can show that your research was well done, that you included the voices of others in context, and that you met the research standards discussed throughout this book.

Democratic Validity is appropriate for participatory action research studies and demonstrates that the voices of all community members were considered.

Catalytic Validity is exemplified in the study of the nurse in the previous section of this chapter. It’s when one of your results exceeds your goal in one or more ways.

Finally, dialogic Validity can be claimed to the extent that you can show that a diverse group of stakeholders was involved and now agree with your final conclusions and analysis. Dialogical validity requires a discussion of the ways in which others collaborated with you throughout the project and through the analysis and writing of the report.

Credibility

There are two attributes you need to consider when writing your final report to ensure your credibility to stakeholders: how you report the data, and how you inform the process. Credibility (whether your case is compelling or not) is the degree to which the person reading the report thinks it makes sense. This is a subjective judgment and requires action investigators to be aware of their audience and context. Most action research uses concurrent qualitative and quantitative data collection strategies, and together they enhance the strength of the others. As discussed earlier, qualitative data, such as interviews, can be quantified by counting the number of times certain topics are discussed. Also the percentages of individuals who agree with one thing or another quantify qualitative evidence and make it feel more solid or credible to the reader. Similarly, quantitative evidence can be scored by discussing key phrases that were written as comments or by adding interview quotes that agree with the finding that was developed.Your final report will be more credible to the extent that you can merge and weave them all together. your data together so that the interaction between them makes sense to your reader.

The second question to consider is how or if you are going to report your process. While investigators in action enjoy cycles of discovery, measurable action, and reflection, they are not inherently necessary in the final report. At the same time, there may be definite reasons why you need to explain the process, in order to make what you found seem natural and therefore more credible to your audience. Basically, if you found that your process added to your findings, you should also discuss your process with your reader. As long as your findings are valid, writing them down as part of the process that revealed them will add more credibility.

Reliability

Action research often tries to create an effect on things or situations that are complex. Therefore, results may not transfer reliably across settings, and action researchers generally do not believe in a one-size-fits-all type of solution. However, it is interesting to read what is happening to others in your field and I fully believe in the reliability of the result of the AR project. They are useful, if not to create a model of success, then at least to provoke new and innovative ideas in non-profit companies and public administration. Therefore, you may want to start increasing the reliability of your project by reading the studies of other action researchers.

There are two types of reliability: internal and external. Internal has to do with whether and to what extent you followed sound research practices in the way you collected and analyzed your data. You should also be able to demonstrate a one-to-one correlation between your data and your findings. Both are considered internal reliability. Another test of reliability is whether these studies could be implemented in new environments and this is known as external reliability. It is advisable to discuss both if writing a report for an academic audience.

This concludes this series of five short articles designed to help you as an action researcher analyze your data and write your final report. Also discussed in this series were: how to analyze action research from a personal point of view, or in conjunction with its purpose, or as a result of its measurable actions, and finally how to determine whether it succeeded or failed in general. No matter what the outcome of this particular action research project is, it has proven to be a very useful and transformative tool for individuals or groups trying to make positive change in complex situations.