Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies: Home

Abstract:
This paper identifies that masters of education students at the University of Dar es Salaam School of Education and Open University of Tanzania are faced with a challenge of deciding which trustworthiness criteria to employ between the qualitative and quantitative criteria in ensuring the genuineness of qualitative enquiry. This paper used 323 students' masters of education dissertations employing the qualitative research methodology and examined the trustworthiness criteria used by students to ensure the rigour of the findings of those dissertations. The findings indicated that most of the students in their dissertations incorrectly employed the quantitative trustworthiness criteria such as reliability and validity to ensure the rigour of their dissertations findings employing the qualitative research methodology. In the sampled masters of education dissertations only 21 out 323 employed the correct qualitative trustworthiness criteria, such as credibility, transferability, confirmability and dependability. This study finding suggests that the authenticity of some dissertations submitted for master's degree award their findings are questionable. The study recommendations were that research methodology course lecturers are encouraged to strengthen teaching of the qualitative research approach as well as dissertation supervision to guide students to apply correct trustworthiness criteria for qualitative research methodologies.

Keywords: trustworthiness, qualitative, quantitative, credibility, dependability, confirmability, transferability.

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