engleski

Reporting on Ethnographic Research in Croatian Social Sciences: Issues of Ethics and Research Rigor

This presentation discusses the conventions of reporting on qualitative research in Croatian social sciences in the areas of ethics and research rigor. In examining these issues, the author has examined articles using ethnographic methods (in-depth interviews, focus groups interviews, observation) published since 2000 in 10 Croatian journals indexed in International Bibliography of Social Sciences (IBSS) or Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). The issues of ethics and research rigor are particularly important when discussing qualitative research. First, qualitative researchers usually interact with human subjects in much more involved ways than quantitative researchers. Therefore, the procedures of gaining entry into field and the respondents' approval are crucial. However, in Croatian social sciences, the human subjects' institutional procedures are underdeveloped. The weak institutional accountability is further reinforced by underdeveloped conventions of reporting on ethical issues. Rather, this often remains researcher's personal decision, and this decision is hindered by journals' word limits, which are more tailored to quantitative pieces. Furthermore, the misconception about the lack of research rigor in qualitative studies is often responsible for accusations of these studies being "less scientific". But, just the opposite, good qualitative studies require stricter regimes of researcher's accountability in terms of her research decisions and procedures. However, as the reports on these research steps and the issues of external and internal validity and the reliability of qualitative work are mostly missing from Croatian ethnographic publications, this reinforces the above misconceptions and disables the discerning reader from evaluating the credibility and legitimacy of the qualitative studies' results.

qualitative research; research rigor; ethics; generalizability; validity; reliability

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