PhD-candidate Department of Methodology and Statistics (0.8-1.0 fte, 4 years)

Project title Research on qualitative research

This project focuses on investigating the rigor and verifiability of qualitative research in the social sciences. The project fits within the research program of Department of Methods and Statistics at Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (TSB) which is dedicated to researching the quality of research practices (meta-research). 

Project description
How verifiable are qualitative research findings? Many fundamental and applied disciplines recognize qualitative research as indispensable for learning about people’s experiences, beliefs, interactions, and behaviors in a natural setting. Findings from qualitative studies inform evidence-based knowledge that may affect policy decisions. It is thus vital that the quality of the findings is guaranteed. To this purpose qualitative research findings should be verifiable, i.e. findings need to be consistent and should be repeatable. To learn about the verifiability of qualitative research findings, we must study the scientific rigor in qualitative research practice empirically. 

The project investigates these above issues with a mixed-methods meta-scientific approach in which we 1) compare quality-criteria checklists for qualitative research, 2) map methodological characteristics of qualitative research studies in various social science fields through quantitative content analysis, and 3) do an in-depth study of purposively selected studies from our initial sample to compare actual research practices to what formal checklists recommend. 

Eventually, we seek to provide guidelines about which verification strategies work best in which research situations. 

More information about Tilburg University and Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral Sciences can be found on: www.tilburguniversity.edu/nl/.
For more information regarding this position and the project you can contact the following persons within the Department of Methodology and Statistics: dr. John Gelissen (tel. 06-22555828 or e-mail [email protected]) and dr. Guy Moors ([email protected]). The telephone number of the secretary is 013-4663687.