Validation in Inquiry-Guided Research: The Role of Exemplars in Narrative Studies

TLDR

Researchers assess trustworthiness based on tacit understanding of situated practices, with validity claims tested through ongoing discourse that socially constructs scientific knowledge. The article redefines validation as a community-based process of evaluating a study’s trustworthiness and proposes an exemplar-based approach. The authors employ Kuhn’s exemplar concept, examining three narrative studies as concrete models to evaluate research practices. These three narrative studies are identified as suitable exemplars for assessing trustworthiness in inquiry-guided research.

Abstract

In this article Elliot Mishler reformulates validation as a process through which a community of researchers evaluates the "trustworthiness" of a particular study as the basis for their own work. Rather than relying for their assessments on an investigator's adherence to formal rules or standardized procedures, skilled researchers, Mishler argues, depend on their tacit understanding of actual, situated practices in a field of inquiry. Validity claims are tested through the ongoing discourse among researchers and, in this sense, scientific knowledge is socially constructed. Within this perspective, Mishler proposes an approach to the problem of validation in inquiry-guided studies that relies on Kuhn's concept of exemplars— concrete models of research practice. He then examines three studies of narrative, suggesting them as candidate exemplars for this area of research since they provide reasonable grounds for evaluating their trustworthiness.