Karen O'Reilly

Qualitative research should be guided and evaluated according to its methodological principles not by any false or imported ideas of how it should be.  

In my book Qualitative Research Methods for Everyone: An Essential Toolkit, Policy Press, 2025, I argue that however you approach your qualitative research, whatever methods you use – whether it is fully immersive, rich and extensive, or short-term, limited and focused, be it visual or sensory, virtual or blended – you should be guided and evaluate it by its principles not by any false idea of how it should be.  Ask: What did I aim to achieve? 

Key tests for qualitative research that I discuss in more detail in the book

• Validity: does it do what it set out to do?
• Transparency: Is it transparent, rigorous and reflexive?
• Usefulness: Is it useful or applicable?
• Representativeness what does this mean in qualitative research? Is it meaningful? Does it develop general themes and typologies? Does it evoking shared meanings? Does it enable transference? Does it generalise through theory and concepts
• Hopefulness: does it give us some hope?

Let’s look at these in turn

Is it valid? Does it do what it set out to do?

“Good qualitative research ensures it has listened and heard, given participants the opportunity to consider, expand, change their minds, and elaborate. Good qualitative research provides richness, complexity, depth, and diversity. It challenges our and others’ preconceptions. Good qualitative researchers will clarify their interpretations, and show where they have been critical or interpretive, or analytical. Good qualitative research will include analysis of the wider context, such as opportunities, rules, norms, culture, and conditions.” (O’Reilly 2025: 45)

Is it transparent, rigorous and reflexive?

In quantitative research the concept of reliability asks if the research has any interviewer effect, or if it is objective and detached from the researcher. In qualitative  research “Our work is reliable, if it is transparent (clear and open), rigorous (careful, considerate and thorough), and reflexive (an adaptive practice of continually considering the relationship between the researcher and the researched)” (O’Reilly 2025: 45) 

Is it useful or applicable?

“In the tradition of emancipatory social science, Maria Mies (1983) suggests that the truth (or value) of a theory depends on ‘its potential to orient the processes of praxis towards progressive emancipation and humanisation’ (Mies 1983: 124 in Westmarland 2001: 4). That is to say: might it be useful? Might it work?…We might ask whether the research gives us the confidence to design or imply interventions. Is there enough relevant contextual detail for others to do the same? Has it had or does it offer some utility within the original context. Does it bring the public voice (their meanings and insights) to policy making?” (O’Reilly 2025: 46)

Is it representative?

“Statistical generalisation is disingenuous without a statistically representative sample; it also reveals a poor grasp of the nature of both quantitative and qualitative research. Qualitative research achieves representativeness through being broadly meaningful, developing themes and typologies, evoking shared meanings, enabling transference, or by using theory and concepts. “ (O’Reilly 2025: 46)

I unpack and expand all these terms in the book. 

Does it give us hope? 

“I am confident that we all value the characteristics of qualitative research because we hope its insights might eventually make the world a better place; we all wish to be transformative (see Chapter 7). However, our aspirations in that direction might not take the form of applied social science, of actually designing interventions or directing policy. Instead, we might simply and loosely care about the world. We might be content with insights that challenge existing knowledge, or make us think in a different way. This is true for research that falls into the category of pure or basic research.” (O’Reilly 2025: 48)

Or as Les Back has said: “Our work may be of value precisely because it documents remarkable things that are not remarked upon and in so doing creates an archive of emergent alternatives, directions or possibilities. I think in a way this has been a latent or tacit commitment in all the work I have done without really comprehending it. As scholars the attentiveness we pay to the world is part of hope’s work”. (Back 2021: 4)

Back, L. (2021) Hope’s Work. Antipode, 53: 3–20. 

Check out the book and the Podcast

You will need to read the book to fully understand what these tests mean for your own practice. You might also enjoy The Qualitative Research Methods for Everyone Podcast 

or wherever you get your podcasts