Social Reliability in Qualitative Team Research

• Published in: Sociology (Oxford) Vol. 44; no. 2; pp. 325 - 343
• Main Authors: Sanders, Carrie B., Cuneo, Carl J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.04.2010; Sage Publications; Sage Publications Ltd; Cambridge University Press
• Subjects: Content analysis; Data analysis; Data coding; Data collection; Emotional expression; Emotionality; Group dynamics; History, theory and methodology; Interpersonal relations; Knowledge; Logical suppositions; Methodology; Methodology (Data Collection); Qualitative analysis; Qualitative data; Qualitative research; Reflexivity; Reliability; Research design; Research methods; Research subjects; Researcher Subject Relations; Researchers; Social conditions & trends; Social dynamics; Social systems; Sociology; Sociology of knowledge and ethics; Sociology of knowledge and sociology of culture; Sociology of science; Student transcripts; Studies; Subjectivity; Team fieldwork; Teams; Teamwork; content analysis; emotionality; qualitative reliability; suppositions; team research; methodology; research; knowledge; Qualitative research; Methodology; Emotions; Researcher; Team work; Reliability
• ISSN: 0038-0385; 1469-8684
• DOI: 10.1177/0038038509357194

Much of the attention in team-based qualitative research has been on reflexivity, subjectivity, and emotionality in the relationships between researchers and subjects during data collection and analysis. There has been less emphasis on the relationships among researchers, especially the social dynamics of inter-coder agreement in what we call in this article 'social reliability'. We explore three aspects of social reliability during team coding: explicit team knowledge, implicit team suppositions and assumptions, and explicit and implicit emotionality. Inter-coder reliability is not merely a methodological and scientific issue, but also a social one. Researchers ignore it at their peril. We suggest that researchers should endeavour to develop ways of explicitly recognizing and incorporating social reliability into their projects in order to enrich our understanding of research subjects.