Issues of Reliability and Validity Are Critical in the Choice of Research Designs and Methods

Issues of reliability and validity are critical in the choice of research designs and methods

BC2001

Business Research Methods

Assignment One

Matthew Douglas

G20539751

November 26th 2013

Word Count: 1391 (Not including references)

The following essay will discuss the importance of reliability and validity of research, both at the research design and research method stage. It will show how critical they are in choosing a research design by using a longitudinal research design and the semi-experimental. It will also look into a qualitative and quantitative example to further the understanding of how critical reliability and validity are, using the example of questionnaire based research

When answering or posing a question that requires research, one cannot just gather information and facts and then describe them. The intended audience must be able to understand how and why the researcher came to their conclusion, therefore the audience must also agree with the sources used and any criticism made to this research must be answered by the research itself. The audience will be able to criticise the research and thereby not agree with the answer, if the research taken is not reliable or valid. Booth et al (2003) state that “The most important thing you can do at this stage of your research is to keep your research question at the front of your mind. You must screen sources for reliability, but you must also screen them for relevance: Do they look as though they will help you answer your question? Or even clarify it?” Bryman et al (2012) defines reliability as the degree to which a measure of a concept is stable and Sekaran (2004) adds that it must be consistent too. A reliable source would normally come in the form of published text, encyclopaedias, and journals. It would not be classed as reliable if the data is taken straight from a website, whether true or not, it could be simply an opinion from an unreliable source. If the research is replicable then it...