Issues of validity in qualitative research

This anthology focuses on the validation of qualitative research in the social sciences. The authors discuss epistemology, concepts of validity in the social sciences, and procedures for validating qualitative research. Departing from philosophical approaches as hermeneutics, dialectical materialism and postmodernism, and idfferent fields - psychometrics, education and linquistic analysis - the authors converge on emphasizing validation as communication and action. Among the issues treated are 1) the relation of truth and validity 2) the consequences for social research of a critical view on a correspondence theory of truth 3) communicative and pragmatic concepts of validation 4) validation within areas as psychometrics qualitative interviews and narratives 5) the quantitative controversy 6) the question of objectivism versus relativism.