Qualitative Research: Strengths And Weaknesses

Using any research method has its strengths and weaknesses, which may raise concerns about the quality of the research. Therefore, and in order to ensure the trustworthiness of the study, four criteria were considered throughout performing this study. These criteria are: credibility; reliability; transferability and confirmability (Shenton, A. 2004:63).

6.4.1. Credibility

Credibility in the qualitative research is to evaluate how appropriate the used measuring techniques are to measure what is actually intended to be measured in the study (Golafshani, 2003:599). To ensure the credibility of the study, two techniques were employed, which are: the ethical consideration and the iterative questions (Shenton, A. 2004:64). Regarding ethical consideration,

However, this is difficult to achieve in the qualitative research because of the nature of the phenomena scrutinised qualitatively (Marshall and Rossman, 2011). Yeung (1995:318) argues that to improve the validity and reliability of the research, it would be useful to use triangulation technique, which involves using multi-methods strategy to collect the data. Using different methods in one study reduces the limitations of each method and maximises their benefits (ibid, 319). Therefore, this study used a wide range of interviewees and a range of documents to collect the data. In addition, reporting in detail the processes within which the study was performed allows a future researcher to repeat the same study and achieve similar

Conformability is, however, difficult to be assured as long as the research design and data selection are the researcher 's work (Shenton, 2004:72). Again, using triangulation can improve the research objectivity and reduce the researcher 's bias (ibid). In this vein, the study’s findings were drawn in line with the legislations that regulate the introduction programmes in each country. That means the researcher’s bias is limited to these official documents. Another way to ensure the objectivity was to motivate the selection of research design, methods and techniques to answer the research questions (ibid). In this regard, the motivations for selecting an approach where other approaches could have been possible were explained. In other words, interviewing female refugees is the only appropriate method to report their experiences in the labour market. Alongside female refugees interviews, the textual analysis and elite interviews serve as complementary methods to gain a full picture, which covers the different angles of the problem. In addition, explaining the methodological approach in-depth gives the reader the room to evaluate how far the results are emerging from the collected