A note on the credibility quality improvement in qualitative research: for MBA students

A note on the credibility quality improvement in qualitative research: for MBA students

 

Highlight 5 main ideas of Lincoln and Guba’s trustworthiness framework on how to improve the credibility of qualitative research findings, in the context of doing MBA dissertation projects. It would be useful to provide an example to illustrate the ideas in terms of research theme of "the employees' perceived impacts of top-management members' scandals on their companies' staff morale and corporate atmosphere in Hong Kong".

Lincoln and Guba’s trustworthiness framework helps an MBA dissertation show that its qualitative findings are credible, transparent, and meaningfully grounded in participants’ experiences. The framework comprises four core criteria—credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability—with authenticity often treated as a fifth, broader concern about fair and useful representation of participants’ realities.

Five main ideas

Idea	What it means	How to strengthen it in an MBA dissertation
1. Credibility	The findings plausibly represent participants’ actual views and experiences; it is qualitative research’s counterpart to internal validity.	Use prolonged engagement, triangulation of data sources, member checking, and detailed quotations.
2. Transferability	Readers judge whether findings may apply to another setting; the researcher enables this by providing rich contextual description rather than claiming universal generalisation.	Describe the Hong Kong organisational setting, participant roles, company sector, and cultural context in depth.
3. Dependability	The research process is logical, stable, and traceable; another researcher could follow the decisions from data collection to interpretation.	Maintain an audit trail covering recruitment, interview guides, coding changes, analytic decisions, and revisions.
4. Confirmability	Findings are grounded in participants’ data rather than the researcher’s assumptions or preferences.	Link every theme to verbatim extracts, keep a reflexive journal, and invite peer or supervisor review of the coding.
5. Authenticity	The study fairly represents different stakeholders’ perspectives and produces insights that are meaningful and potentially useful to them.	Include frontline staff as well as managers, report dissenting views, and avoid presenting one group’s interpretation as the whole organisational reality.

Applied to your dissertation theme

Suppose your MBA project examines employees’ perceived impacts of top-management scandals on staff morale and corporate atmosphere in Hong Kong. You might conduct semi-structured interviews with employees from several Hong Kong companies that have experienced a publicised leadership scandal.

Credibility

Credibility means your interpretation of “low morale” or “damaged corporate atmosphere” reflects what employees actually experienced, not merely what you expected to find. You could interview employees across departments and levels, compare interview accounts with internal communications or public reporting where ethically available, and return a summary of preliminary themes to participants for confirmation.

Example: If several participants say the scandal made them less willing to defend the company publicly, but your analysis initially labels this only as “reduced loyalty,” member checking may reveal that they mean fear of reputational association and uncertainty about leadership integrity. Revising the theme accordingly improves credibility.

Transferability

Transferability does not mean your findings automatically apply to every Hong Kong company. Instead, you provide enough contextual detail for another MBA reader to decide whether the findings might transfer to, for example, a financial-services firm, a family-owned SME, or a multinational subsidiary.

Example: Explain that participants worked in a highly customer-facing Hong Kong service business, that the scandal received extensive local media coverage, and that staff felt visible to clients and regulators. These details allow readers to assess whether similar morale effects might occur in comparable reputation-sensitive settings.

Dependability

Dependability requires a transparent and consistent research process. Your methodology chapter and appendices should show how participants were selected, how interviews changed over time, how transcripts were coded, and why themes were merged, renamed, or discarded.

Example: Keep an audit trail such as: “Initial code: ‘loss of pride’; after comparing 12 transcripts, renamed ‘diminished organisational identification’ because participants referred to embarrassment, disengagement, and reluctance to recommend the employer.” This makes your analytic route inspectable.

Confirmability

Confirmability asks whether the conclusions can be traced back to the data. Include sufficient anonymised quotations to demonstrate that each theme is supported by several participants, and explain how you managed your own assumptions—for instance, if you entered the study believing scandals always reduce morale.

Example: If some employees report that a transparent crisis response actually strengthened pride in the company, do not omit this evidence. Report it as a contrasting theme, supported by quotations, and explain why it qualifies the dominant finding. A reflexive journal can document why you accepted or challenged that interpretation.

Authenticity

Authenticity encourages you to represent employees’ experiences fairly, including voices that may be less powerful or less easy to hear. In a scandal study, this is particularly important because employees may fear retaliation, reputational harm, or being seen as disloyal.

Example: Rather than interviewing only HR managers, include frontline employees, middle managers, and possibly former employees where appropriate. Present both negative accounts—such as cynicism, anxiety, and reduced trust—and constructive accounts, such as renewed expectations for ethical leadership. This produces a more balanced and useful account of morale and corporate atmosphere.

Practical dissertation wording

You could state in your methodology chapter:

“Trustworthiness was addressed using Lincoln and Guba’s framework. Credibility was supported through triangulation and member checking; transferability through thick description of the participating organisations and Hong Kong context; dependability through an audit trail of recruitment, interviewing, coding, and analytic decisions; confirmability through data-supported themes, verbatim quotations, and reflexive journaling; and authenticity through the inclusion of diverse employee perspectives and attention to dissenting experiences.”

The strongest MBA dissertations do not merely name these five criteria; they show concrete evidence—quotations, coding records, reflexivity notes, contextual descriptions, and participant feedback—that each criterion was actively addressed.

 

Provide 3 academic references on the topic discussed here, in Harvard reference format.

Here are three suitable academic references in Harvard referencing style for a dissertation discussing Lincoln and Guba’s trustworthiness framework.

1.    Lincoln, Y.S. and Guba, E.G. (1985) Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.

2.    Shenton, A.K. (2004) ‘Strategies for ensuring trustworthiness in qualitative research projects’, Education for Information, 22(2), pp. 63–75. doi:10.3233/EFI-2004-22201.

3.    Nowell, L.S., Norris, J.M., White, D.E. and Moules, N.J. (2017) ‘Thematic analysis: striving to meet the trustworthiness criteria’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16(1), pp. 1–13. doi:10.1177/1609406917733847.

How to use them

·        Cite Lincoln and Guba (1985) when introducing the original trustworthiness criteria: credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability.

·        Cite Shenton (2004) when explaining practical strategies such as member checking, triangulation, audit trails, thick description and peer debriefing.

·        Cite Nowell et al. (2017) when linking trustworthiness to your thematic analysis of employee interviews on top-management scandals, staff morale and corporate atmosphere.

For example, in your methodology chapter you could write:

Trustworthiness was addressed through the criteria proposed by Lincoln and Guba (1985), with practical strategies including triangulation, member checking, thick description and an audit trail (Shenton, 2004). These procedures were integrated into the thematic-analysis process to support credible and confirmable interpretations of employees’ experiences (Nowell et al., 2017).