The Trustworthiness of Findings from Participatory Methods

This paper addresses the common perception that the findings of a participatory inquiry may be undiscipled, subjective and unrepresentative. The participatory inquirer uses four criteria to establish the trustworthiness of their findings: credibility, transferability, dependability and conformability. The requirements and methods relating to each criterion are discussed in detail. These include prolonged and intense engagement, persistent/parallel observation, triangulation, peer debriefing, negative case analysis, participant checks, and confirmability audit.