Validity in interpretive methods: frameworks and innovations

ABSTRACT

In this review essay, we examine the various threads, debates, and dialogues around valildity in interpretive metods. We address the ways in which the question of validity have emerged in the different areas of interpretive social sciences. We then delve into future directions for conversations on validity in the interpretive social sciences. The essay wraps up by suggesting a radical politics that inverts the reductionist thread of communication, instead suggesting radical paradigm-shifting registers for conversations on the quality of interpretive accounts.

KEYWORDS:

• Validity
• interpretive methods
• decolonization
• whiteness
• critical

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Although largely interpretive methods are situated within the social science tradition, with the attention to empirical analyses of subjective interpretations, as we will explore in this essay, interpretation forms a key methodological tool of the humanities tradition. In this sense, interpretive methods occupy spaces of convergence between the social sciences and humanities in Communication Studies.