Table 3.

Techniques to enhance trustworthiness

Lincoln and Guba’s criteria53	Techniques used in this study to enhance trustworthiness
Credibility	Member checking 53: asking participants if they wish to review interview transcripts and preliminary findings. Triangulation of data sources: data gathering via staff and client interviews, observation and document analysis, to build a coherent justification for themes.50 53 55
Transferability	Purposeful sampling of staff and client participants to maximise the range of data collected.56 ‘Thick’ descriptive data collected via interviews to provide enough information to be able to compare these findings to other programmes in similar contexts.53 Context is an important consideration in the exploration of person-centred care.21
Dependability	‘Audit trail’ to document and adhere to data collection and analysis processes and interpretation.56 ‘Dependability’ audit undertaken by the first author’s supervisors (CB, GR, VL) to check the acceptability of the audit trail.53
Confirmability	Triangulation of data sources: as for credibility (above). Reflexivity through the use of memoing throughout the study.57 Confirmability audit by the first author’s supervisors (CB, GR, VL) to ensure interpretations are supported by the data.53