Abstract
Research in information systems includes a wide range of approaches that make a contribution in terms of knowledge, understanding, or practical developments. In these days of “fake news” and vast amounts of spurious internet content, scholarly research needs above all to be able to demonstrate its validity – are its finding true, or its recommendations correct? However, empirical studies show that discussion of validity in research is often weak. In this paper we examine the nature of truth and relatedly correctness in order to construct a validation framework that can potentially encompass all the varied forms of research. Within philosophy, there has been much debate about the nature of truth – is it correspondence, coherence, consensual or pragmatic? In fact, current debates revolve around the idea of a pluralist view of truth – that there may be different forms of truth depending on context or domain. Related to truth is the wider concept of correctness – propositions may be true (and therefore correct) but correctness can also be applied to actions, performances or behavior. Based on these two concepts, we develop a framework for research validity and apply it to a range of research forms including positivist, mathematical, interpretive, design science, critical and action-oriented. The benefits are: i) that a greater and more explicit focus on validity criteria will produce better research; ii) having a single framework can provide some commonality between what at times seem conflicting approaches to research; iii) having criteria made explicit should encourage debate and further development
Recommended Citation
Mingers, John and Standing, Craig, (2019). "A FRAMEWORK FOR VALIDATING INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH BASED ON A PLURALIST ACCOUNT OF TRUTH AND CORRECTNESS". In Proceedings of the 27th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Stockholm & Uppsala, Sweden, June 8-14, 2019. ISBN 978-1-7336325-0-8 Research Papers.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2019_rp/8