Every mixed methods researcher eventually gets the same question, from a reviewer, a committee member, or a skeptical colleague: how do I know your qualitative findings are more than one reader's impression? Most researchers can answer it. The trouble is that the answer is scattered. Coding agreement is in a spreadsheet from March. Member checking is buried in an email thread. The decision trail exists mostly in memory. The rigor was real, but it was never in one place, so when someone finally asks, you reconstruct instead of point.
MM Studio's Rigor Dashboard exists so you can point.
What it does
The dashboard is one screen near the end of your project, right before the Report Builder. It reads five parts of your study and sorts what it finds into three columns: Strong, Needs review, and Missing.
The first source is the trustworthiness record. Has member checking been saved? Is there a second coder? Is coding agreement computed, and does the kappa clear the bar researchers expect?
The second is the set of evidence strength checks: deterministic tests of your sample, your coding depth, and your integration, each marked pass, fix, or not yet run.
The third is the joint display. Do themes exist, and are responses actually coded to them? Does every row carry a representative quote and a saved integration reading, or are some rows still quantitative results sitting next to text no one has examined?
The fourth is the report itself: which sections hold real content, which are still placeholder, and whether anything has been finalized.
The fifth is the project notebook, which answers the plainest question of all. Did your process leave a visible audit trail?
Each finding is written in plain language, and each one carries a button that takes you to the exact step where you fix it. The dashboard reads everything and changes nothing. It only reads. It never touches your work.
Why three columns instead of a score
A single rigor score would be tidy and mostly meaningless. A 78 does not tell you whether the missing piece is a second coder or a quote, and a score is easy to game in place of doing the work.
Three columns turn the readout into a to-do list. Missing items come first, because those are the gaps a reader will notice. Needs review comes second, because those are judgment calls only you can make. Strong items come last, because those are the parts of your study you can now defend with a click instead of a search through old files.
Rigor as honesty, not decoration
Here is the part I care about most. The dashboard does not demand a perfect study. If member checking never happened, it does not treat that as a failure and it does not block your export. It leaves you a clear choice: if member checking was done, record it; if not, name that limitation in the report.
That distinction matters. Rigor in mixed methods research was never about checking every box. It is about knowing which boxes you checked, which you did not, and saying so out loud. A study with a named limitation is credible. A study with a hidden one is a problem a careful reader will eventually find. The dashboard is built to produce the first kind, and its unresolved items feed straight into the limitations section of your report, where they belong.
What changes in practice
Without something like this, rigor gets audited at the worst possible moment: after submission, by someone else. The dashboard moves that audit earlier, to before you write, run by you. By the time you open the Report Builder, you already know what a skeptical reader will ask, because you asked it first.
That is the case for the Rigor Dashboard in one sentence: it turns the trustworthiness of your study from something you assert into something you can show. That is what MM Studio is built to give you, a place where rigor is not a claim you make at the end but a record you can point to at any moment.
The Rigor Dashboard is part of ReliCheck MM Studio. It reads your trustworthiness record, evidence strength checks, joint display, report, and project notebook, then sorts them into Strong, Needs review, and Missing, with a link to the step that fixes each one. See it at mmstudio.relichecksurvey.com.