Without rigor, research is worthless, becomes fiction, and loses its utility (Morse et al., 2002). Validity is an indication of how sound my research is. It applies to both the design and the methods of my research. Measures, samples and designs don’t have validity, only propositions can be said to be valid.
Validity in my data collection means that my findings truly represent the phenomenon of IT offshoring in Morocco. However, any research can be affected by different kinds of factors which, while extraneous to the concerns of the research, can invalidate the findings (Seliger & Shohamy 1989). Controlling all possible factors that threaten the research’s validity is a primary responsibility of every good researcher.
Saunders et al., (2003) suggest that the question that should be posed is how will the findings of my research stand up to close scrutiny?
The authors suggest that it is not possible to know whether or not you have got the answer right. The authors advise that it is possible to reduce the possibility of getting the answer wrong by paying particular attention to reliability and validity of the research design.
Reliability of the research could be assessed using the following questions (Easterby-Smith et al., 2002):
Will the measures yield the same results on other occasions?
Will similar observations be reached by other observers?
Is there transparency in how sense was made from the raw data?
However, unlike mathematics or physics, social sciences do not have fixed rules (Webb, 2000). It is therefore difficult to apply validity or reliability to a qualitative research due to luck of numeric variables. Morse et al. (2002) argue that these measures were terms pertaining to quantitative paradigm and were not pertinent to qualitative enquiry. It is therefore not possible to guarantee that future researches on this phenomenon would yield similar results.
However, I believe that the establishment of clear links between data gathered, the questions asked and conclusions drawn will help reducing research subjectivity (Yin, 1994).