Triangulation in Research 1 1 (original) (raw)

Research triangulation, over the years, has gained much popularity as researchers become more sophisticated in generating and testing theories. Indeed of what use is research whose findings are unreliable and invalid? Answers to research questions are expected to be as close as they possibly can to the reality if they cannot be perfectly accurate. Researchers find a way of producing reliable results by making use of research triangulation. This paper seeks to identify advantages that come with a researcher making use of research triangulation in a study. According to Noble and Heale (2019), research triangulation refers to the process that helps to increase the credibility and validity of research. In other words, research triangulation basically aims at validating the results of a study. Triangulation, sometimes, makes use of mixed methods to achieve the aim of validating research findings. However, triangulation is not the same as mixed methods. Mixed methods basically combine quantitative and qualitative research approaches in getting research questions answered; while triangulation describes how the researcher makes use of all the multiple approaches in the study to extract the required information as well as critically analysing findings (Social Sciences Research Laboratories, 2018); thus establishing validity and credibility. Validity in research basically establishes how correctly a particular approach measures something and how closely findings are to actual values or concepts being examined (Noble & Heale, 2019). It indicates whether findings from a particular research can be trusted. Achieving validity is very important to ensure that findings from a research can be correctly used and interpreted in such a way that stakeholders of the study are able to make informed