ABSTRACT
Addressing the trustworthiness issue is important in helping to make qualitative and interpretive tourism studies more rigorous. However, the relevance of the issue of trustworthiness depends on the paradigmatic stance the qualitative researcher takes. Lincoln and Guba (1985) propose four basic criteria of trustworthiness (i.e. credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability) which parallel positivists’ reliability and validity constructs. Different practical techniques may be used to achieve those criteria: prolonged engagement, persistent observation, theoretical sampling, thick descriptions, reflexive journals, member checks, dependability and confirmability audits, etc. More than any other technique, triangulation offers a comprehensive means by which to apply the trustworthiness criteria. Triangulation consists in looking at the same phenomenon or research question from more than one source of evidence. Different types of triangulation (e.g. data, method, investigator and theoretical triangulation) may be used to make findings more trustworthy.
