EVALUATIVE CRITERIA AND EPISTEMIC COMMUNITIES 97At an operational level, attempting to specify techniques that can be used to verify whether
evaluative criteria have been met produces a dizzying array of terminology, as Table 5.3 illustrates.
The scholars presented in this table interpret the link between techniques and criteria in quite
different ways. For example, Erlandson et al. (1993) replicate practically all of the Lincoln and
Guba (1985) techniques, although, without explanation, they omit “negative case analysis” from
techniques for verifying “credibility” and add “purposive sampling” to the techniques for estab-
lishing “transferability.” Brower, Abolafia, and Carr (2000) connect their techniques to criteria
different from those named by the other authors, listing “authenticity,” “plausibility,” and “criti-
cality.” And Miles and Huberman (1994), in contrast to the others, do not connect techniques,
which they call “tactics,” to any specific criteria at all.^8
Surveys of the literature, such as Creswell’s (1998a), deal with this cacophony by advising
novice researchers to know the criteria and techniques within the specific interpretive tradition
they are using; his text includes biography, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, and
case study research. Although this may be sound advice in many ways, it suggests that these
research practices are entirely separate and unrelated, ignoring the commonalities among meth-
ods deriving from their shared ideational grounding (see Yanow, chapter 1, this volume). It is this
common ground that constitutes the interpretive research gestalt described above, lending these
practices collectively a character that is different from variables gestalt practices and, hence,
rendering them unrecognizable to the researcher in the hypothetical scenario with which the chapter
opened. My claim is not that the interpretive gestalt is strictly delimited, but that it identifies and
recognizes a set of research practices and understandings that facilitate communication across
various research traditions, that lead to the sort of reading habits described in that scenario, and
that demarcate them from others. In short, I contend that the terminological proliferation in the
criteria literature gives a misleading impression of interpretive research practices as fragmented
and disjointed, whereas from an ontological and epistemological perspective they are character-
ized more by agreement than by cacophony.
Making clear that these methods do share common ground requires understanding how the
literature got into the thicket of criteria and technique.^9 One explanation for the multiplicity of
interpretive criteria is the dominant understanding established by methodological positivism of
what constitutes “scientific” research in the social sciences. Against this seemingly hegemonic
backdrop, interpretive researchers working on developing appropriate evaluative criteria face a
dilemma: either to reclaim and redefine recognized, methodologically positivist terms in order to
communicate with researchers across the board (as well as with outsiders perceived to hold funding
purse strings—this is Morse and Richards’s [2002] position)^10 or to invent new terms that better fit
research conducted within an interpretive gestalt, thereby improving discussion among members of
that epistemic community (Miles and Huberman’s [1994] position)^11. Although both strategies are
reasonable responses to the marginalized position of interpretive research, their simultaneous pur-
suit contributes to the terminological complexity apparent in Tables 5.1 through 5.3.
A second explanation for the apparent multiplicity of interpretive criteria is varying and incon-
sistent usage of the terms “criterion” and “technique.” The appellation “criterion” implies an
overarching principal, whereas “technique” implies a means of achieving that principal. Most
authors are internally consistent as they build new taxonomies, but reading across studies one
does not find consistency: what one author calls a “criterion,” another calls a “technique.” As
taxonomies have accumulated over time, the potential confusion for novice researchers rises
exponentially—concealing the commonalities that may be more apparent to researchers experi-
enced in the interpretive gestalt. In sum, when asked the question, what are the appropriate stan-
dards for evaluating an interpretive study? or what are the guidelines for conducting a high-quality