Transparency in Practice in Qualitative Research

The discipline of political science has been engaged in discussion about when, why, and how to make scholarship more transparent for at least three decades. This piece argues that qualitative researchers can achieve transparency in diverse ways, using techniques and strategies that allow them to balance and optimize among competing considerations that affect the pursuit of transparency.. We begin by considering the “state of the debate,” briefly outlining the contours of the scholarship on transparency in political and other social sciences, which so far has focussed mostly on questions of “whether” and “what” to share. We investigate competing considerations that researchers have to consider when working towards transparent research. The heart of the piece considers various strategies, illustrated by exemplary applications, for making qualitative research more transparent.