External Validity

legal elements: capacity (the participant is of age and mentally and physically competent to go through the role requirements of his or her role as participant in the study), information (the patients is given sufficient information to make an enlightened and informed decision to participate in the study, including information on potential and actual risks involved), and voluntariness (the participant is free to withdraw anytime during the study). All these elements should be present for an effective consent to exist and reflected in the consent form (Drew, Hardman, & Hosp, 2008).
Any breach of ethical integrity during the study weakens and even invalidates the study. Credibility: The central issues on credibility (internal validity) in qualitative

Internal validity should eliminate the possibility of bias both the research design and methodology. However, the most common issues hounding clinicians involve serious shortcomings in external validity (Rothwell, 2006). Thus, the discussion of approaches to strengthen validity shall focus on external validity. Sufficient contextual disclosure: Since qualitative studies often do not believe in the rationalist concept of generalizability, the issue on external validity can be dealt with through adequate, if not full, description of all relevant contextual factors in the study. This disclosure allows the readers to judge on the generalizability of results into their contexts (Rothwell, 2006). Detailed description of the study boundaries: Both the scope and limitations of the study should be accurately described and disclosed so that the readers will understand how far they can apply the findings of the study into their specific contexts (Rothwell, 2006). This disclosure shall include at least: the number of participating organizations and their locations; restrictions on the participants; the number of participants; data collection methods; the length and number of data collection sessions; and data collection time

In effect, critical subjectivity becomes possible. Subjectivity occurs in the sense of performing personal interpretation of observed phenomena; but critical as such interpreting is regulated by critical objectivity. It is particularly important in qualitative research, which often does not start from well-defined theory or theoretical model. Shaw (2010) argued that integrating reflexivity in qualitative research will provide holistic character to the study output. Thus, participant reports may be understood subjectively but critical thinking