Validity as a Quality Criterion of (Pedagogical) Scientific Findings

Mojca Lukan

Summary:  This paper addresses the conception of validity as a characteristic of measurement, which represents one of the fundamental criteria for assessing the quality of scientific findings. In doing so, we acknowledge that understanding the criterion of validity is based on the axioms of positivism which serves as foundation for the quantitative research paradigm. In view of this, we provide an attempt of transferring such a notion of validity into the qualitative paradigm, since validity construed in a manner typical of quantitative methodology cannot be utilised as a criterion based on which the quality of scientific research could be assessed, and that due to differing ontological, epistemological, and methodological properties pertaining to these two paradigms. In addition to that, we exhibit the understandings of criterion, content and construct types of validity that mark the era during which positivism dominates in humanities and social sciences. Lastly, we delineate the conceptions regarding internal and external validity which constitute the focus of our discussion.