ABSTRACT
This chapter and Chapter 10 deal with the criteria and standards used for judging quality in action research reports. Although the two concepts of criteria and standards are interlinked, it is important to appreciate the distinction between them. A criterion refers to something you expect to see, so is set in advance; a standard is how that something is judged in relation to the identified criteria. For example, you would expect a hotel to be clean, warm and welcoming; these are the criteria you would expect of any hotel. However, you would choose to go to Hotel B because it is cleaner, warmer and more welcoming than Hotel A. Hotel A does not come up to the same standards as Hotel B. You make judgements according to your own standards about what you expect from a hotel. The same principles extend to writing an action research report. You expect to see certain criteria achieved in a report, and these criteria are identified in this chapter. However, you would make judgements about the level to which those criteria are achieved according to specific standards; these matters are dealt with in Chapter 10.
