Educational Research Methods
A site to support teaching and learning...
Triangulation and data redundancy
Triangulation refers to approaching the same research question using several sources of evidence. There are different kinds of triangulation.
Triangulation requires redundancy in the information available - that is that there are several slices of data that can be interrogated to help answer the same research question. In the hypothetical example below, there is suitable data to triangulate for two of the three research questions.
RQ: research questions
Squares: classroom observations
Circles: teacher interviews
Ellipses: documents
Green, blue, orange - different classes
Red: Governing body.
Judging redundancy with compound questions.
Some research questions may be compound: meaning they can only be answered by in effect answering two or more subsidiary questions. Care must be taken in judging if there is redundancy in data sources when working with compound research questions.
This is a personal site of Keith S. Taber to support teaching of educational research methods.
(Dr Keith Taber is Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.)
2016
