Naturalistic Inquiry¶
Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic Inquiry. Sage.
Cited by¶
20 citations across 20 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- External Analytic Challenge
- Reasoning that can still be changed is deliberately handed to someone competent enough to engage its substance and positioned outside the frame that produced it; that person is required to probe it rather than react to it; and whatever comes back must either alter the work or be answered on the record — all of it completed while altering the work is still cheaper than carrying it forward.
This sourceSpecifies peer debriefing, an exchange with a disinterested peer outside the inquiry that probes the working while the inquiry is still open rather than delivering a verdict on it afterwards.
- Reasoning that can still be changed is deliberately handed to someone competent enough to engage its substance and positioned outside the frame that produced it; that person is required to probe it rather than react to it; and whatever comes back must either alter the work or be answered on the record — all of it completed while altering the work is still cheaper than carrying it forward.
- Grain of Analysis
- The statistical insight that grain-level resolution must be earned against held-out structure ports to qualitative research as the discipline of not creating a new code without evidence the data warrants it, with member-checking as the qualitative analogue of held-out validation.
This sourceEstablishes member-checking (verifying interpretations with participants) as a credibility/trustworthiness technique for qualitative research — the recovery/validity test for coded interpretation, analogous to held-out validation.
- The statistical insight that grain-level resolution must be earned against held-out structure ports to qualitative research as the discipline of not creating a new code without evidence the data warrants it, with member-checking as the qualitative analogue of held-out validation.
- Negative Case Analysis
- Qualitative social science (origin): negative case analysis is named as a trustworthiness criterion in interpretivist research and is constitutive of deviant-case selection in grounded theory.
This sourceNames negative case analysis as a trustworthiness/credibility criterion in naturalistic research — revising the working hypothesis to account for cases that do not fit; the origin reference.
- Qualitative social science (origin): negative case analysis is named as a trustworthiness criterion in interpretivist research and is constitutive of deviant-case selection in grounded theory.
Domain-specific¶
- Analytic Memo
- In applied qualitative research — health-services and education studies, for instance — the memo corpus does concrete methodological work by satisfying the "audit trail" standard that Lincoln and Guba established for demonstrating trustworthiness
This sourceNaturalistic Inquiry, whose trustworthiness criteria include confirmability, established through a confirmability audit including the audit trail.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
“Confirmability (7b) the confirmability audit, including the [audit trail]”
- In applied qualitative research — health-services and education studies, for instance — the memo corpus does concrete methodological work by satisfying the "audit trail" standard that Lincoln and Guba established for demonstrating trustworthiness
- Confirmability
- Confirmability is one of the four trustworthiness criteria introduced by Lincoln and Guba in Naturalistic Inquiry (1985) as the qualitative-research analogue of objectivity, asking whether a study's findings are demonstrably grounded in the data rather than in the interpretive preferences of the researcher
SupportedVerified against the source
- Confirmability is one of the four trustworthiness criteria introduced by Lincoln and Guba in Naturalistic Inquiry (1985) as the qualitative-research analogue of objectivity, asking whether a study's findings are demonstrably grounded in the data rather than in the interpretive preferences of the researcher
- Participant Observation
- The skeleton formalised in the Malinowski tradition runs: access negotiation (securing permission and building initial rapport) → embedding over time (sustained presence, not single-visit) → engaged participation (the researcher does things members do, alongside them) → systematic observation (field notes, analytic memos, drawn maps of spatial and social structure) → reflexive record (documentation of how the researcher's own position, identity, and prior commitments have shaped what they could observe) → member-checking and analysis (presenting preliminary interpretations back to participants to surface errors or gaps invisible from the analytic vantage)
This sourceLincoln and Guba's credibility technique of member checking, in which analysis is taken back to participants.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
“information storage and retrieval system, without [permission] in writing from the pubUsher”
- The skeleton formalised in the Malinowski tradition runs: access negotiation (securing permission and building initial rapport) → embedding over time (sustained presence, not single-visit) → engaged participation (the researcher does things members do, alongside them) → systematic observation (field notes, analytic memos, drawn maps of spatial and social structure) → reflexive record (documentation of how the researcher's own position, identity, and prior commitments have shaped what they could observe) → member-checking and analysis (presenting preliminary interpretations back to participants to surface errors or gaps invisible from the analytic vantage)
- Peer Debriefing
- Codified by Lincoln and Guba in Naturalistic Inquiry (1985) as one of four trustworthiness procedures for qualitative work
This sourceNaturalistic-inquiry text listing peer debriefing among the credibility techniques for establishing the trustworthiness of qualitative research. Naturalistic-inquiry text requiring the inquirer and debriefer to keep written records of each encounter and tying the audit trail to dependability and confirmability. Lincoln and Guba's Naturalistic Inquiry placing peer debriefing among the credibility techniques and defining it as a process of exposing oneself to a disinterested peer in a manner paralleling an analytic session. Naturalistic Inquiry's account of the peer debriefer as keeping the inquirer honest, playing the devil's advocate, and testing the inquirer's emerging working hypotheses.
Supported in partVerified against a saved copy of the source
“persistent observation, triangulation, peer debriefing, negative case analysis, and member”
- Codified by Lincoln and Guba in Naturalistic Inquiry (1985) as one of four trustworthiness procedures for qualitative work
- Prolonged Engagement
- Prolonged engagement is one of the trustworthiness criteria Lincoln and Guba specified in Naturalistic Inquiry (1985) as a safeguard for credibility in qualitative research: the researcher's sustained presence in a field setting over sufficient time to build trust with participants, develop adequate contextual understanding, and detect and correct the distortions introduced by the researcher's initial, visitor-mode presence
This sourceLincoln and Guba's naming of prolonged engagement, paired with persistent observation, as the long-term in-depth-contact activity that raises the probability of high credibility. Lincoln and Guba pairing prolonged engagement with persistent observation and triangulation among the credibility activities, and warning that the naturalist must guard against overrapport ('going native') and premature closure.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
“investigators); prolonged engagement and [persistent] [observation] (maintaining long-term, in-depth contact”
- Prolonged engagement is one of the trustworthiness criteria Lincoln and Guba specified in Naturalistic Inquiry (1985) as a safeguard for credibility in qualitative research: the researcher's sustained presence in a field setting over sufficient time to build trust with participants, develop adequate contextual understanding, and detect and correct the distortions introduced by the researcher's initial, visitor-mode presence
- Reflexive Journal
- Formalised by Lincoln and Guba in Naturalistic Inquiry (1985) as part of the qualitative-research audit trail — the set of artefacts that allows a study's credibility and confirmability to be externally evaluated — the reflexive journal is the trustworthiness artefact specifically for the observer's own stance, as distinct from field notes (which document the observed setting) and member-checking records (which document participants' responses to the researcher's interpretations)
This sourceLincoln and Guba's Naturalistic Inquiry presents the reflexive journal as a self-directed trustworthiness technique serving confirmability. Naturalistic Inquiry prescribes daily reflexive-journal entries (the daily schedule and personal diary, with methodological logging as needed), making contemporaneity the test of an entry's evidentiary value. Lincoln and Guba's Naturalistic Inquiry listing the keeping of a reflexive journal, suggested by Guba (1981), among the techniques for confirmability and within the audit-trail table. Lincoln and Guba's Naturalistic Inquiry describing the reflexive journal as a kind of diary kept across the study, with a daily schedule and personal diary and a methodological log of methodological decisions.
Supported in partVerified against a saved copy of the source
“is the reflexive journal, a kind of diary in which the investigator”
- Formalised by Lincoln and Guba in Naturalistic Inquiry (1985) as part of the qualitative-research audit trail — the set of artefacts that allows a study's credibility and confirmability to be externally evaluated — the reflexive journal is the trustworthiness artefact specifically for the observer's own stance, as distinct from field notes (which document the observed setting) and member-checking records (which document participants' responses to the researcher's interpretations)
- Theme Reification
- The intervention is to maintain provenance: keep the construction visible in the write-up through explicit analyst-voice framing, anchor every thematic claim to the specific quotations and coding decisions that generate it, and treat themes as the analyst's summaries rather than as participants' possessions — disciplines that are operationalised in qualitative research through member checks, audit trails, negative case analysis, and reflexive memos
This sourceThe trustworthiness disciplines Lincoln and Guba set out - member checks, the audit trail with its dependability and confirmability audits, negative case analysis and reflexive journals.
Supported in partVerified against the work's full text
“including the audit trail [Confirmability] (7b) the [confirmability] audit, including the audit”
- The intervention is to maintain provenance: keep the construction visible in the write-up through explicit analyst-voice framing, anchor every thematic claim to the specific quotations and coding decisions that generate it, and treat themes as the analyst's summaries rather than as participants' possessions — disciplines that are operationalised in qualitative research through member checks, audit trails, negative case analysis, and reflexive memos
Mechanisms¶
- Comparative Case Review Panel
- The discipline that guards against this is to keep each challenge tied to evidence the analytic mechanisms can actually check, to record dissent rather than average it away, and to treat member-endorsement as a validity check
This sourceTreats member checking as a key technique for testing interpretations and establishing qualitative credibility.
- The discipline that guards against this is to keep each challenge tied to evidence the analytic mechanisms can actually check, to record dissent rather than average it away, and to treat member-endorsement as a validity check
- Holdout Case Review
- The move it institutionalizes is negative-case analysis — actively hunting the disconfirming instance instead of the corroborating one.
This sourceNegative-case analysis deliberately searches for disconfirming cases and uses them to revise or refine an emerging explanation.
- The move it institutionalizes is negative-case analysis — actively hunting the disconfirming instance instead of the corroborating one.
- Insider Narrative Review Panel
- It is the practice known in qualitative research as member checking, elevated from a validity nicety to a consent and power boundary.
This sourceIdentifies member checking as returning qualitative accounts and interpretations to participants for scrutiny and credibility testing.
- It is the practice known in qualitative research as member checking, elevated from a validity nicety to a consent and power boundary.
- Member Check Session
- This is member checking, or respondent validation, a standard move for establishing credibility in qualitative work.
This sourcePresents member checking, or respondent validation, as a core technique for establishing credibility in qualitative inquiry.
- This is member checking, or respondent validation, a standard move for establishing credibility in qualitative work.
- Member Checking and Contestation Session
- Done well, it catches interpretation errors that no amount of internal rigor would, and it makes the eventual claim both more accurate and more contestable.
This sourceTests data, interpretations, and conclusions with the people represented so they can correct errors and contest the adequacy or fairness of the account.
- Done well, it catches interpretation errors that no amount of internal rigor would, and it makes the eventual claim both more accurate and more contestable.
- Member Checking Session
- The session's value is that it catches the misreading while the participant is still there to speak to it.
This sourceDescribes member checking as letting participants correct interpretive errors while they can respond to the researcher.
- The session's value is that it catches the misreading while the participant is still there to speak to it.
- Member Checking Validation
- It is a longstanding trustworthiness criterion in qualitative inquiry precisely because the interpreter is otherwise unchecked.
This sourcePresents member checking as a longstanding credibility and trustworthiness check on qualitative interpretation.
- It is a longstanding trustworthiness criterion in qualitative inquiry precisely because the interpreter is otherwise unchecked.
- Participatory Research Session
- The session convenes experience holders around already-collected material and structures the work so their reading carries real weight: analysts present tentative patterns rather than conclusions, participants confirm, dispute, or reframe them — a live form of member checking
This sourceDefines member checking as returning emerging findings and interpretations to participants so they can confirm, challenge, correct, or reframe the researchers’ account.
- The session convenes experience holders around already-collected material and structures the work so their reading carries real weight: analysts present tentative patterns rather than conclusions, participants confirm, dispute, or reframe them — a live form of member checking
- Reflexive Field and Decision Log
- Transferability Claim Check
- Its strength is that it is the last guard against transferability overclaim: it aligns the write-up's confidence with its evidence, keeping the account's reach to what the cases support and leaving generalization, properly, as a judgment the reader makes with a bounded claim in hand.
This sourcePlaces transferability judgment with the reader while requiring contextual description and bounded working hypotheses from the investigator.
- Its strength is that it is the last guard against transferability overclaim: it aligns the write-up's confidence with its evidence, keeping the account's reach to what the cases support and leaving generalization, properly, as a judgment the reader makes with a bounded claim in hand.
Verification¶
Does it exist? Not checked yet. This entry carries no identifier to resolve. It was extracted from the citation as written in the article, normalized, and deduplicated against the rest of the registry.
Does it back the claim? Read against the text for 7 of 20 citations: 1 supported, 6 supported in part. Each verdict is shown under its citation below, with what in the work backs the sentence.
Was it audited? Yes. A second, independent pass read the citation against the article text and recorded a verdict.
Support is checked per citation rather than per work — the same source can be cited soundly in one article and wrongly in another. Per-citation recording began recently, so a citation with no recorded check is a gap in the record rather than evidence it went unchecked.
See how references were verified.
Links previously used in the corpus¶
Before the registry existed this work was also linked 4 other ways.
- https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/naturalistic-inquiry/book842 ×4
- https://search.worldcat.org/title/Naturalistic-inquiry/oclc/11467836 ×1
- https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/naturalistic-inquiry/book842 ×1
- https://www.sagepub.com/en-gb/asi/book/naturalistic-inquiry ×1
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