Egon G. Guba

Criteria for assessing the trustworthiness of naturalistic inquiries

This is the ninth ERIC/ECTJ Annual Review Paper, preparation of which was supported by the ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) Clearinghouse on Information Resources, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. The material in this article was prepared pursuant to a contract with the National Institute of Education, U.S. Department of Education. Contractors undertaking such projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their judgment in professional and technical matters. Points of view or opinions do not necessarily represent the official view or opinion of NIE. The author is grateful to David Clark, Larry Havlicek, Robert Heinich, John McLaughlin, Cecil Miskel, and Robert Wolf for their careful critique of an earlier version of 1his paper, and to his wife, Yvonna Lincoln, from whose joint work with the author in other contexts many of the ideas expressed in this paper emanated.

Epistemological and methodological bases of naturalistic inquiry

How suitable is the rationalistic paradigm for research focusing on human behavior? Proposing that naturalistic inquiry better serves the social/ behavioral sciences, the authors define the differences between the two paradigms and suggest criteria for ensuring the trustworthiness of naturalistic inquiry.

Judging the quality of case study reports

In this paper, the authors outline how quality can be judged in “the typical product of alternative paradigm inquiry,” the case report. Their earlier work has focused on judging the quality of the inquiry process; this paper focuses on the product. They propose and discuss four criteria: resonance, rhetoric, empowerment, and applicability.

Ethics: The Failure of Positivist Science.

Abstract: The authors argue that the metaphysical assumptions undergirding conventional (positivist) approaches to research provide a warrant both for deceptive research and for objectifying human research participants. They review the present status of ethical guidelines for inquiry and demonstrate how the realist ontological and objectivist epistemological assumptions of positivism systematically abet the circumvention of those guidelines. These difficulties, however, may be resolved by a shift to naturalistic inquiry with its relativist ontology and subjectivist epistemology. The authors then outline the special ethical problems typical of naturalistic inquiry. They conclude that a shift in paradigm eliminates the need for deceiving and/or objectifying research participants.

Levels of R&D Productivity in Schools of Education:

A As part of a national study of research, development, dissemination, and utilization activities in schools, colleges, and departments of education (SCDEs), six sub-studies were conducted of R&D productivity in which the evidence of productivity was available through sources independent of the SCDE itself, i.e.: (1) Education journals (2) /resources in Education (RIE) entries in Educational resources in Education (ERIC) (3) Education books (4) Education convention programs (5) Foundation grants to SCDEs for R&D or dissemination and utilization (D&U) activities (6) Federal and other public agency grants to SCDEs for R&D and D&U activities

The Distinction between Merit and Worth in Evaluation.

In this paper, we distinguish between two aspects of value: merit and worth. Merit, we argue, is context-free, but worth can be determined only in relation to an actual context. If so, worth must be assessed by a separate evaluation in each context, and cannot be established without an intimate knowledge of local social, cultural, political, and value factors. Evaluation studies of worth thus require, we contend, field-oriented, qualitative, naturalistic methodologies rather than the more conventional, experimental, quantitative approaches that have characterized evaluation practice heretofore.

The Configurational Perspective: A New View of Educational Knowledge Production and Utilization

b. The inadequacies cannot be accounted for or explained away on the basis of conditions (political or structural) that have arisen in the past 2-3 years. In fact, they are embedded in the conceptual view of educational KPU that has come to dominate the field. This perspective, a unified-systems view, presupposes and/or attempts to effect a linked set of productive agents and agencies each of which assumes discrete responsibility for a segment of Research-DevelopmentDiffusion-Adoption effort to achieve a commonly agreed upon goal of ultimate KPU productivity. c. This view has set in motion a cycle of failure in educational KPU productivity by: 1. Establishing unachievable aspirations. 2. Ignoring the idiosyncratic (ideographic) goals of individuals and individual agencies in the educational KPU community. 3. Changing policy and program directions persistently and frequently in an attempt to overcome failures in program achievement provoked by conditions 1 and 2 above.

RSVP: We are Pleased to Accept your Invitation

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A Re-Examination of a Test of the "Research and Development Model" of Change

EAQ published in its Winter, 1972, number an article by Ernest House et al., reporting an empirical test of a well-known model of educational change, the so-called Clark-Guba Model. Clark and Guba have written this article in partial rejoinder to House and his associates and as an extension of their earlier published work on change.