With literal text I assume you mean fiction, text purposefully constructed by an author in order to create meaning and to communicate this meaning. There are many approaches or theories that help to analyses and interpret such texts. What you find in them may be subjective, but that is not the point. As long as you are able to communicate and argue your position with the textual evidence, it’s fine, this is what most scholars within the humanities are doing. There is no such thing as a final reading of a creative, polysemantic text, it’s on ongoing never-ending discourse. All you can aim for is to be a significant part of it.

Hello Ms. Sabah

A. Reliability:

1. The reliability measures could be developed for the whole questionnaire or for each dimension of the questionnaire .

2. Reliability consists of several measures:

Item alpha reliability and split-half reliability assess the internal consistency of the items in a questionnaire – that is, do the items tend to be measuring much the same thing?

3.Split-half reliability on SPSS refers to the correlation between scores based on the first half of items you list for inclusion and the second half of the items. This correlation can be adjusted statistically to maintain the original questionnaire length.

4. Coefficient alpha is merely the average of all possible split-half reliabilities for the questionnaire and so may be preferred, as it is not dependent on how the items are ordered. Coefficient alpha can be used as a means of shortening a questionnaire while maintaining or improving its internal reliability.

5.Inter-rater reliability (here assessed by kappa) is essentially a measure of agreement between the ratings of two different raters. Thus it is particularly useful for assessing codings or ratings by 'experts' of aspects of open-ended data; in other words, the quantification of qualitative data. It involves the extent of exact agreement between raters on their ratings compared with the agreement that would be expected by chance. Note then that it is different from the correlation between raters, which does not require exact agreement to achieve high correlations but merely that the ratings agree relatively for both raters.

To be continued.

B. Validity:

6.Still, this unified concept of validity is best understood and examined within the context of its four discrete facets: content validity, construct validity, criterion validity and consequential validity.

5.Several authors suggest employing the following four steps to effectively evaluate content validity: 1) identify and outline the domain of interest, 2) gather resident domain experts, 3) develop consistent matching methodology, and 4) analyze results from the matching task.

7.Several series of steps in which to follow when pursuing a construct validation study: 1) generate hypotheses of how the construct should relate to both other constructs of interest and relevant group differences, 2) choose a measure that adequately represents the construct of interest, 3) pursue empirical study to examine the relationships hypothesized, and 4) analyze gathered data to check hypothesized relationships and to assess whether or not alternative hypotheses could explain the relationships found between the variables.

8.Criterion validity refers to the ability to draw accurate inferences from test scores to a related behavioral criterion of interest. This validity measure can be pursued in one of two contexts: predictive validity or concurrent validity. In predictive validity, researchers are interested in assessing the predictive utility of an instrument.

C. References:

. Validity and Reliability of Students and Academic Staff’s Surveys to Improve Higher Education. Educational Alternatives, Journal of International Scientific Publications, 2016, Vol.14, pp. 242-263.

.Landau, S. and Everitt, B. S.(2004). A Handbook of Statistical analyses using SPSS.

.Howitt, D. and Cramer, D.(2008). Introduction to SPSS.

. Amanda Jane Fairchild. Instrument Reliability and Validity:

Introductory Concepts and Measures

Regards,

Zuhair

I would agree with Z. A., if you were doing a quantitative study. However, you are not doing one. Trying to squeeze a qualitative study into the quantitative paradigmatic box is hard to do.

I would take a look at Walter Fisher's work on the narrative paradigm. He basically says we cannot apply the terminology of quantitative research to narratives and other qualitative data. Rather than using validity and reliability and generalizability, he uses fidelity, coherence, and verisimilitude.

Narrative rationality requires coherence and fidelity. Narrative coherence is the degree to which a story makes sense. Coherent stories are internally consistent, with sufficient detail, reliable characters, and free of major surprises. Narrative fidelity is the degree to which a story fits into the observer's prior understanding. Stories with fidelity may influence their beliefs and values. Narratives that have verisimilitude are those that resonate with another person in an emotional or evocative way.

Fisher, Walter R (1984). "Narration as Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument". Communication Monographs. 51: 1–22.

Fisher, Walter R (1985). "The Narrative Paradigm: An Elaboration". Communication Monographs. 52: 347–367.

Fisher, Walter R. Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989.

I'm doing textual analysis of a literary text through close reading method.

Analyzing the data through a close reading of the text is an inherently subjective approach, that would not benefit from the quantitative standards associated with reliability and validity.

I agree with what has been said about the concepts reliability and validity. They are not appropriate for the kind of research you are doing. If your not analysing the text as narratives maybe you would find the much used concepts proposed by Lincoln and Guba helpful; Credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability.

Lincoln, Y. S., Guba, E. G. Naturalistic Inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage; 1985.

Or you can take a look at the article by Graneheim and Lundman below where they discuss how to achieve trustworthiness in content analysis.

Graneheim, U. H., Lundman, B. Qualitative content analysis in nursing research: Concepts, procedures and measures to achieve trustworthiness. Nurse Educ Today (2004);24:105-12.

Sabah Zaib

There is nothing clinical about literary analysis, it is always perspectral and subjective. That is why it is important to delienate the perspective/ideological approach you are adopting to analyse a text. But most importantly, you must also discuss why you are adopting a certain approach to elucidate a text. Your study will be judged by your fidelity to approach and how the approach has elucidated the text to either gain insight or add meaning to both the text and your engagement with it.

I would inquire why we need to discuss validity and reliability of a literary text! If the text is fiction the task will be enormous: my characters don’t have precise frontiers between the real and the unreal. Nevertheless, when i describe a site i always make it real; even when unreal it fits the characters’ description, precisely.

Now, if the text is nonfiction it reauires resesrch, data amd bibliography to substantiate its claims. Coherence within the text may be the best validity and reliability one can find.