Publisher:  San Diego: Academic Press
Page Numbers: 642-680

Validity -- generally defined as the trustworthiness of inferences drawn from data -- has always been a concern in educational research. Questions about validity historically arose in the context of experimentalist research and, accordingly, so did their answers. The emergence of nonexperimental, so-called "qualitative," methods in educational research over the past two decades, however, poses new questions. In particular, should experimentalist conceptions be applied to alternative research designs? If so, how? If not, what conceptions should be applied instead?