Quality in Educational Research: Applying the Trustworthiness Framework of Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba

This article revisits research quality in qualitative educational inquiry through Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) trustworthiness framework. It examines credibility, dependability, confirmability, transferability and authenticity as interrelated criteria for ensuring rigor, ethical representation and methodological coherence in qualitative research. The paper argues that credibility aligns findings with participants lived experiences, dependability ensures procedural consistency, confirmability grounds interpretations in data, and transferability supports contextual applicability through rich description, while authenticity integrates these dimensions through fairness and faithful representation. Despite their widespread adoption, the study identifies a persistent gap between conceptual understanding and practical application, where trustworthiness is often treated as a procedural checklist rather than a reflexive, ongoing research process. It also highlights emerging methodological challenges posed by AI-assisted qualitative analysis, particularly regarding transparency and interpretive traceability. The article proposes a context-sensitive and process-oriented approach to operationalising trustworthiness across all stages of inquiry. It concludes that strengthening qualitative research quality requires shifting from procedural compliance to sustained epistemological commitment, ensuring findings are credible, transparent and ethically grounded.