Epistemology in ethnography: Assessing the quality of knowledge in human factors research

Quality measures are often used to judge research. This paper looks at what measures have been used in the human factors community to evaluate qualitative research and suggests some alternatives. Using ethnography as a test case, the paper raises the question of whether it is appropriate to use measures derived from quantitative and experimental research to judge the quality of qualitative studies, regardless of the subject and problem domain. © 2010 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.