Assuring reliability in qualitative studies: A health informatics perspective

Assuring the validity and reliability of data is an essential component of data collection. While quantitative studies use certain statistical techniques such as 'Cronbach Alpha' values for a reliability index, in qualitative studies these type of measures are not widely available, and appear to be predominantly subjective. So, many studies, if at all probe this aspect, highlight what is normally termed as 'saturation' and use this as a measure of reliability. While this serves the purpose to some extent, whether researchers can use this as a concrete evidence is questionable. We propose a new approach to assure reliability in qualitative studies, and provide a case study to demonstrate our approach and its benefits. We hope that this serves as a model to many PhD students and other Early Career Researchers who pursue their studies using qualitative approaches.