Dear Indrayani,

For triangulation purposes, you must collect data to reflect multiple perspectives. Data from husband, grandmother or any other source that has any stake in the issue will be beneficial. Collecting data only from the women won't allow for triangulation.

Noman Mohammad, so.. in the research report, i can write that the subjects of the study are postpartum women. A triangulation method has been used to verify the data by comparing the information between postpartum women and husbands, grandmothers, etc.

Is it right?

In general, triangulation address the same research question with two different data sets. Using participants' with different perspectives would not really address the same question, but it would enrich your overall data collection. So, I would drop the emphasis on "verifying" and try to understand the responses you get from those different perspectives.

Thanks David Morgan for your explanation.

Hi Indrayani,

There are two parts in answering to your question.

1, Understand the goal of triangulation

Researchers in research methods have long debated the purpose of triangulation technique. Denzin (1978) first proposed it as a validation strategy. This stance has been criticised because each source of data/each method with a proper design can provide enough data to verify itself. For instance, if you interview deeply enough a woman, it is possible to verify all the findings within her case. You don't need to interview other women or their husband or others to get your findings "validated". Thus, later, scholars argue that triangulation should be understood as another way replacing validation.

‘Triangulation is less a strategy for validating results and procedures than an alternative to validation … which increases scope, depth and consistency in methodological proceedings’ (Flick 2002: 227).

Thus, your current main method (interview)/data source (women) is enough to verify the findings you got. But if you want to get "additional" depth, then you can use triangulation. But what forms of triangulation?

2. Forms: Denzin (1978) proposed four forms of triangulation: Data triangulation, investigator triangulation, theory triangulation, and methodological triangulation (within-method and cross/between-method).

Here, I think you are asking about data triangulation. You use the same method (interview) to compare insights from different sources of data. Denzin advised that we should use the same method to explore as many different areas as possible. Areas can be divided by time, space, and person. You can use interviews to investigate women when they are in different time periods, in different locations, and compare them.

Regarding triangulation of person:

• You can triangulate between women to see whether or not a pattern of experiencing obstacles is persistent.
• You can also compare information from different stakeholders: namely, besides women - the main target group, their husbands, grandmother, etc. - the ones who also observe, perceive of obstacles facing women and may participate in/contribute to the situations of realising those obstacles. For this, you may refer to the article by Bonnie J. Breitmayer, Lioness Ayres, Kathleen A. Knafl (1993 Triangulation in Qualitative Research: Evaluation of Completeness and Confirmation Purposes), who compare different data sources by domain of interest.

Hope it helps,

Best,

I agree with Kien Nguyen, you do not have to verify your qualitative data. Qualitative methods are methods that in itself gives valid data, if used a proper way.

Triangulation can of course be used, but it is important that you make clera for yourself why you want to make a triangulation, what your goal with that is and what it will add to your research.

Are you unsure if your method for collecting data is a good method? Then you might do a method triangulation. It is for eample well-known that what people tell is not the same thing as they do. One often try to make onself look better then one is. If you for example ask if people are speeding when driving pass schools most would say no, but many of them would be found doing exactly that if you measured their speed. And if you ask health-care professionals if they keep a good hand-hygien to not spread diseases almost everyone would say yes but a substantial number would be caught with "dirty" hands if they were observed when working in patient care.

So, yes triangulation could be done to verify data, but I think that you best think of the reason for doing it so you know that you do it by the right resason and the proper way.

Qotadeh Saber Al-jawazneh