Cita de:Geijsel, Femke; Sleegers, Peter; van den Berg, Rudolf. Transformational leadership and the implementation of large-scale innovation programs. Journal of Educational Administration 37.4 (1999): 309-328.

“In qualitative research, intersubjectivity is an important method for determining the reliability of the analyses. Intersubjectivity means consensus between researchers. Smaling (1992, pp. 170-3) describes three traditional forms and two alternative forms of intersubjectivity.

Consensual intersubjectivity refers to consensus between the researchers on the interpretation of the data. The data analyses in each of the present studies were conducted by two researchers with both of their judgements considered equal. Consensus was reached on each of the text fragments. The assignment of the keywords and categories to the components of innovative capacity was an iterative process in which the research supervisors were also involved. In this process, consensus was also reached in the end.

Intersubjectivity by regimentation refers to a strict regulation of the data-collection techniques to minimize any differences between the researchers. For this purpose, all of the interviews in the first study and the first six interviews in the second study were conducted by the two interviewers in each other’s presence. One interviewer asked the questions while the other critically listened. Afterwards, each interview was carefully evaluated with an eye to the conduct of consistent and similar interviews.

Intersubjectivity by explicitness refers to being as explicit as possible about the materials, methods, design, and motives for the selection of these. For this purpose, each of the steps in the present studies was carefully described and justified (van den Berg and Sleegers, 1996b; Geijsel, 1994; Geijsel et al., 1999).

A less widespread form of intersubjectivity is argumentative subjectivity. This is based on the assumption that the growth of scientific knowledge cannot continue without discussion and argumentation. According to Smaling (1992), methodological discussion as well as equality between the researchers are of central importance to this form of intersubjectivity. Both occurred in this study.

Dialogical intersubjectivity, also a less widespread form of intersubjectivity, means that consensus is necessary not only between researchers but also between the researchers and the respondents. This can be gained by providing feedback and considering the reactions of the respondents to the feedback. In the present studies, each of the participating schools received a feedback report. The school also had the opportunity to discuss the report with the researchers, and a few of the schools did this.”

(negrita y separación de párrafos es nuestra)