I'm writing Chapter 5 of my thesis and is finding it really hard to articulate the discussion on validity of findings. Question:-
Do I discuss all aspects of validity ie face,construct,criterion,internal,external,population and ecological validity?
Comments gratefully accepted. Ta muchly.

hi harui,

validity is always a difficult matter in quality research. Some say that by definition arewas like internal and construct validity are difficult to provide.
I think that is useful to write about the validity of your research, often this will be face validity: the design is based on discussion with experts (e.g. supervisor, professor etc.)Obviously this is my personal opinion and others may have different views.

Thanks, Rick. My fieldwork was carried out mainly in Cantonese. As such, speech patterns, translation issues and code-switching are major areas of discussion.
It sucks!

hairui, at my uni we had a PhD student group across all disciplines with students dealing with issues of translation and language in research, this last academic year. this was very insightful and helpful. we are now planning a public event on the topic, however it probably won't happen before January 09. but if you'd be interested, let me know how i can get in touch with you so that i can send you information once dates etc. are set.
in my own research there are issues such as dealing with swiss german interviews. swiss german is a spoken language only, it isn't written. thus, even the transcribing already involves translation (into high german). what does that do to the validity???

Great to hear from you Shani! Yes, I am interested in the forthcoming event. Like Swiss German, Cantonese is largely a spoken language, hence a dialect rather than language due to the limited script. Translation is a major concern in validity as it depends on the linguistic and cultural skills of the researcher. Have you read Brislin (1976) on translation issues? Latest article written by Esposito (2005) is very enlightening too.
Call me: 0113 2480479! Looking forward to hearing from you.

cantonese is not a dialect, it is a language.

Now that is an interesting comment. Are you a linguist? I'm curious to know how you arrive at the conclusion that Cantonese is a language rather than a dialect. What about Fujianese, Hakka, Chaozhou, Shanghainess... and the list goes on?

yes, i am a linguist

having or not-having a written version does not make something a language or a dialect. most languages in the world do not have a written version.

Well, may I suggest you read Tong and James (1996)and a recent article entitled "Fuzzy Cantonese".

no thanks, i only read books relevant to my specific area

Perhaps you should consider what your specific area is before commenting on other people's work. Truly unprofessional to pass comments on areas you are not familiar with.

i read the article "fuzzy chinese" (couldn't find the exact title you suggested on google) and i don't quite understand why you interpret it as meaning that kantonese is not a separate language.

my present specific area is adult L2 acquisition and i have done work earlier on prosody, codeswitching, bilingualism, phonetics, language typology, sign language, space, language & cognition, L1 attrition and pidgins/creole languages.

i consider myself expert enough to have an opinion on what is a language and what is a dialect.

i do not have a high opinion of the "fuzzy chinese" article by the way, for several reasons.