When I think about triangulation--I tend to think about the difference between an anecdote and a pattern. Anecdotes certainly serve a purpose--providing close insight into a particular moment, giving a face and story to a topic or idea. But anecdotes can be dangerous when we see them as representative of some larger trend without any evidence to say so (as we often see cable news pundits do!). A pattern, on the other hand, is something we've seen across examples and thus holds some truth beyond one individual's experience in that individual moment. As in Mathison's definition of triangulation, we don't see this pattern as some universal, certain, single perspective, we see this patterns as something that "occasionally converge, but frequently are inconsistent and even contradictory" (p.79). It's a pattern but not dogma.

I can understand why this conception of triangulation and validity can be unsettling to people. Perhaps because I've been brought up in a post-modern era, I myself feel wholly comfortable with the idea of things being "true in context" or "true for this moment." I don't see that as relativism as much as I see it as emblematic of how we really experience the world. But, I must say, the Western world is only recently emerging from thousands of years of a culture of certitude, dogma, and Right with a capital R. I think it's understandable that it can be difficult to accept that there aren't necessarily a priori Truths waiting to be discovered but instead truths being constructed in our historically-contingent experience.