Sorority Rituals - Reflections On Rites of ... - Mari Ann Callais

where I was able to travel based upon finances and accessibility. As I stated earlier in this study,
sorority chapters vary from campus to campus. I included sorority women from campuses that
had a wider range of experience as opposed to just one type of sorority chapter or a certain part of
the country. I visited campuses in various regions of the United States with the exception of the
West Coast and Southwest. I conducted interviews at small, private institutions, as well as large
public institutions and regional institutions. Most of the interviews were conducted in campus
meeting rooms. One was conducted in a residence hall facility.
Trustworthiness
Research is concerned with the ethical manner in which studies are conducted. Terms
such as internal validity, external validity, and reliability are used in qualitative research. “Being
able to trust research results is especially important to professionals in applied fields, such as
education, in which practitioners intervene in people’s lives (Merriam, 1998, p. 198). Lincoln
and Guba (1985) proposed four constructs for qualitative research, which are credibility,
transferability, dependability, and confirmability, which establish the “truth value” (p. 290), or
trustworthiness, of qualitative research.
According to Lincoln and Guba (1985), one of the primary goals of credibility in
qualitative research is that the study is conducted such that the “probability that the findings will
be found to be credible is enhanced” (p. 296). In order to enhance the credibility and
dependability of my findings, two colleagues conducted “peer examinations” (Merriam, 1998, p.
204) of the transcripts of the findings of the study. The two peer examiners have worked with me
throughout this study in order to enhance internal validity. One of the peer examiners is familiar
with the sorority environment and the other is an academic, faculty person. With their
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