Understanding Research (3 page)
Read Understanding Research Online
Authors: Marianne Franklin
This section outlines very briefly the methods/research skills literature at large. It is not a comprehensive survey or the sort of critical discussion that characterizes the
literature review
element of research dissertations (see
Chapter 4
). These texts have inspired and influenced me during the course of writing and consulting with others on this book so they will be referred to where appropriate along the way.
Marketing mechanisms in the publishing industry and the way publishing catalogues are designed often sees books categorized along disciplinary lines; reproducing the quantitative–qualitative divide in all its various guises accordingly. That said, this is a large and diverse range of titles that is constantly in a state of renewal yet also rooted in oft-cited classics; from those that encapsulate a particular philosophical position or side of an ongoing theoretical debate, or epitomize a particular methodological approach for a disciplinary mainstream, or its critics.
Navigating this complex and wide-ranging literature is often not a job many students see as their first task when setting out on a research project; students who are often introduced to this literature either through prescribed or recommended reading. Which texts are preferred depends on the discipline, the predominant
methodological approach (media studies and economics are different enterprises for instance) or the particularities of how methods training vis-à-vis research skills are treated as educational elements in degree programmes. Moreover, as we will be discussing later on in several ways, there is often a gap between our expectations of the sorts of answers any literature can provide to our particular quandaries and how they actually end up making sense for a project (your dissertation, this book) in the long run. Managing this disconnect often means realizing that there will never be an exact fit between what various authors have to say, the examples they draw upon, and what we think – need – to know; ‘the catch in all research – making the switch from the literature at hand and our material’.
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For these reasons, methods books have a idiosyncratic role in our work. They are often consulted either too early, or too late, assuming they are consulted at all. Moreover, the way they can help us make a distinction between the more general questions we might ask of a particular literature (theoretical or more practical) related to a field of inquiry and the particularities of the
research question
we need to develop to guide the project on hand is too often overlooked.
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Paradoxically this is often because learning by doing, trial and error, is integral to understanding research. A lot of information this sort of literature can provide at the time we need it most does not really sink in until later for this reason. Nonetheless, being able to get research done effectively also generates its own research needs; we need to learn about the principles, procedures, and wider implications of this process on its own terms.
The literature can be roughly divided into more or less comprehensive how-to sorts of books that cover various
data-gathering
methods; an important cluster in its own right. A second category focuses on the practicalities of getting through a project, guides on how to write academically, or books focusing on specific skills such as literature reviews.
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There is a substantial category of books nowadays that look at both aspects; this one included. Underwriting all of these, are those books dealing with more abstract discussions of issues arising from particular tensions within an approach, topics from the philosophy or history of science, and disciplinary interventions looking to challenge methodological orthodoxies or present new visions. These are closely related to philosophical treatments and public debates about the relationship between science, culture, and society.
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The latter contributions often only start to make sense once you have actually done some sort of research, acquired some hands-on knowledge of certain data-gathering techniques, or come out the other end of your ‘theory’ or ‘findings’ chapters.
Along these axes, the literature then diversifies. First, books speaking to or from within discrete disciplines where the methods presented – or critiqued – are grist to debates or divides within said discipline.
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These titles stressing social and political research contrast with those referring to ethnography, cultural studies, or history
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on the one hand, and those with terms such as ‘interpreting’, ‘re-imagining’, or the prefix ‘post’ on the other.
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A second diversification is into specific
methods
books with a wider purview. This is the aforementioned corner of the how-to methods market
and one that some titles above fit into as well. These titles take a more eclectic approach to methods in order to achieve some level of coverage, applicable for either qualitative or quantitative methods courses.
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Then there are those texts that are unapologetically either quantitative or qualitative. These sort of books can, by definition, go a lot deeper into the nuances of those methods covered in ways that more general, more synthetic approaches cannot.
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Then there are those that can be clustered together as critiques, and radical alternatives. Here I would include those working from critical, feminist and postcolonial standpoints either within or across disciplines.
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These are books that look to overturn longstanding working assumptions and lacunae in terms of the politics of doing research, and knowledge-production from the geographical ‘periphery’ of the Global South vis-à-vis the richer regions in the ‘centre’ of the Global North.
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This includes alternative frames for undertaking research into non-western societies that engage with many issues broached here drawing on postcolonial and feminist critiques assessing mainstream western academic research from outside, along with corollary inflections from debates within academe by its own internal critics. Such titles are self-contained, working across our concerns here yet influential resources nonetheless. As these are advocatory approaches that aim to improve if not reinvent academic research practice from the ground up, they are mostly more meta-level interventions.
The above literature has been diversifying of late in the wake of previous decades’ focus on interdisciplinary methods, literary turns, postcolonial, feminist and post-structuralist critiques in the social sciences, borrowing heavily from the humanities in doing so. Another, more recent impact on methods texts is the impact of ‘new technologies’ or ‘new media’;
information and communication technologies
(ICTs), the internet, the web, and automated data-gathering and analytical tools, and electronic databases. This time-sensitive and growing literature roughly corresponds in terms of the tripartite division outlined so far; how-to books, discipline-based, or more abstract methodological exegeses.
All aim to guide research students through what is an emergent terrain circumscribed by various digital media (the web, ‘social media’, mobile communications devices, and older computer-mediated communications like email and discussion forums), the impact of ICTs on conventional research practices (automated research tools, web-mapping and data-mining software for searching the web, general-purpose search engines), and even new notions of the research field (virtual or cyberspatial domains), research subjects and topics (avatars to computer games, to simulations), to specific sorts of internet-based research tools and digitalized research techniques. Not only have these developments re-opened older methodological debates, but they have also upped the ante here in terms of the appropriate role, added value, and scientific status of the internet, ICTs, virtuality, and other mediated fieldwork scenarios in academe.
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Chapter 5
looks at these issues in more detail.
Because the point of the exercise is not to reinvent the wheel, this book traces a path through this rich literature, referring the reader to conceptual and practical
insights provided by others where apposite. In that spirit the next sections tackle some key concepts, both practical and more abstract. First we take a look at what is actually meant when we talk about
academic
research. This moves us into a more complex discussion about what is at stake when talking of a quantitative–qualitative divide. From there we can tackle some specific terms of reference that crop up in the preparation and the execution phases of an academic research project.
ACADEMIC
RESEARCH?
Set aside for the moment any current notions you have about the social relevance of academic pursuits; old hands are often as cynical as onlookers in this respect – of how research
should
be done or for what purposes. Step ‘outside the box’ for a moment As others eloquently note, good research is not confined to academe (Creswell 2009, M. Davies 2007, Gray 2009, Morley 2006: 87
passim
). Research, that is
actively
and methodically finding out about something by consulting various information sources, is something people do everyday. In academe research is of a different order, however. Emphasis is laid on formalized procedures, presentation formats, spoken and written idioms, codes of practice alongside informal conventions around the production and communication of one’s knowledge; all of which have to withstand
intense
and
concerted
scrutiny over time.
Academic practitioners aim – indeed they are required – to produce work that engages with that of others and in such a way that allows all aspects to be eventually authenticated, replicated, or developed further. From philosophy through to experimental psychology to astrophysics, our work is constantly held under the magnifying glass. These ‘others’ can be our direct mentors or colleagues, co-practitioners in a discrete research group, sub-discipline, or part of a broader ‘epistemic community’ that shares a ‘set of normative and principled beliefs’ – and disagreements – about the matter at hand (Haas, cited in Cinquegrani 2002: 779).
That is the theory in any case. Criticism is the life-force of all scholarly work. We are bound to disagree: dispute resolution or 100 per cent accuracy, even in the most quantitative or scientifically adamant of corners, is an ideal rather than a given.
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Yet as students we learn very quickly that affirmation is the Holy Grail; being caught off-side in a methodological or philosophical war of words is a common and discomforting occurrence. How different researchers handle and articulate these margins is where the most potent differences lie.
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As Niall Ó Dochartaigh points out, in academic settings research
is not simply about finding the answer to a question. It involves learning about the main issues in a particular area and identifying the central arguments made by those on all sides of the ongoing debates. . . . The research process is not only about generating a piece of work. It is also about becoming an expert [in relative terms] on the sources and on the literature in a specialized area whose boundaries you help to define [even modestly] in the course of your research. This expertise is one of the most valuable outcomes of the research process.
(2009: 1–2)
This is why academic knowledge and thought processes are of a different genre to ‘common sense’, general knowledge, or even intuition; though a good dose of all three certainly comes in handy in the research lab, the field, and examination. Nor does it communicate outcomes – these are the research results – in the easy-to-read digests of popular science publications, science television documentaries, or investigative journalism. That said, all these genres of knowledge production draw on academic scholarship and vice versa, depending on the setting. So whilst there are many points in common, academic research-work requires paying explicit attention to articulating the
act of thinking
itself, as a specialized practice; the design, format and argumentation are as important as the outcome of your work. This includes making your sources and affiliations transparent, explicating the steps taken in gathering and processing evidence and linking them to an articulated and annotated conceptual rationale, presenting the results and then offering conclusions; all of which then gets wrapped up in a particular format and idiom for a particular audience.
The various ‘planning regulations’ for completing a research dissertation as part of a university degree, philosophical eddies, data-gathering technicalities, and written presentation formalities have all developed over time in a zigzag fashion; behind the scenes and in the crucible of intense debates amongst not only researchers but also other interested parties. That aside, and contrary to archetypes of how (usually male) genius works, from Galileo to Einstein, or what many students think, academic work is not a hermetic act; it does not take place in either a sociocultural, political, or economic vacuum even when you are locked in your room with the hand-in deadline looming. Inspiration and benefiting from social interaction are virtues in academic research life as well.
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That said, self-sufficiency, fastidiousness, and developing an eye for detail are also indispensable; the life-blood of academic research as they manifest themselves across the disciplinary spectrum. The ensuing infinitude of discussions around meaning on the one hand and empirical – evidential – nuances on the other, all ‘purely academic’ – pedantry in other words – is often a source of exasperation for students starting out. These attributes of contemporary academic practice, ‘knowing an awful lot about not much at all’ are also the target of radical critiques of its role in ethnocentric, ‘western’ dogma about what counts as scientific knowledge.
Perhaps this is why academic work and ensuing publications are often perceived as far removed from everyday life, only good for arcane debates within the hallowed halls of the ivory towers of the university (a standard image in film and television costume dramas in the UK, including the
Harry Potter
franchise) or barely read journals. These hallowed halls exist and, to be frank, the latter archetype of academic publishing is true enough even if it were true that subscription numbers were all that counted here!
This other divide, separating ‘town’ from ‘gown’ does not mean to say that the downstream effects of academic research, from the natural to the social sciences to the arts, and humanities, are negligible or irrelevant; hair-splitting at the sidelines of major events. Far from it, as successive generations of
critical, postcolonial, feminist
, and other alternatives to research conventions continue to argue.
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This notion of there being an irrevocable disconnect between academic and ‘real life’, so to speak, is considerably more permeable in practice. For instance many academic practitioners
sit on advisory councils or policy think-tanks. Others have come to academe after careers in the public and private sectors. The point is that public imaginaries and internal debates around the social relevance of academic knowledge wax and wane in any case; as do the socio-economic stakes, cultural ramifications, and geopolitics.
Whatever your misgivings may be of the point of academic ways of working
grosso modo
, the point to note right now is that these practices and ideas did not come ready-made. Even the most widely accepted analytical frameworks within which an object of analysis is studied and understood have changed over time; e.g. planetary movements as codified in Aristotle’s cosmology vis-à-vis how they have come to be charted and understood in contemporary astronomy and astrophysics since then. As philosophers of science tell us, advances (and retreats!) in knowledge of the world around us occur less as giant leaps – the cliché known as the ‘Eureka!’ moment – but rather in more incremental steps. Such
paradigm shifts
in the history of western science take place over time, if not hundreds of years (see Chalmers 2004, Kuhn 1962). The furore over challenges to the widely-held belief in mediaeval western Europe that the sun revolved around the earth is another well-discussed case in point. The current stand-off in some parts of the world between the, once maverick (‘heretical’) and now orthodox view of the origins of the human species, evolutionary theory (‘Darwinism’) along with its core concepts (‘natural selection’) and corollary disciplines (e.g. palaeontology, primatology) and the rise of theories that question its underlying precepts (‘Creationism’, or ‘Intelligent Design’) is another example.
More about just how the legacy of these sorts of debates matter for our purposes in the next chapter. First we need to present the ideas and conventions of academic research practice into perspective and in their own right.
Let’s take a step back and look at how two broad traditions of quantitative and qualitative research line up if we strip things back to fundamental statements of intent; a discussion of what these terms mean for this book is below. First, consider
Table 1.1
, which distils a range of characterizations of what various modes of research state as their intention. Reflect for a moment; what do you consider to be the
primary
objective of
academic
or, if you prefer,
scientific
or
scholarly
research?
Your initial answers need not mean you are confined to either side with no way out. Nor does this schematic resolve other thorny issues around the definition and relative importance attached to terms that these two broad bands have in common, or how researchers are engaging in more than one sort of activity, spending time in the other camp at any one time; e.g. a critique may well be in the context of a project aiming to empower a sector of the population, recommendations ensue from making predictions, or generalizations, objects of inquiry may require the application of statistical and linguistic modes of analysis.
What
Table 1.1
distils are oft-repeated ways of characterizing the object of the exercise from either side of this working divide. Look more closely though at those terms they have in common. For instance, in practice all researchers are
analysing
or
interpreting
their ‘data’ or ‘findings’, making a case based on the ‘empirical’ evidence or form of reasoning – argumentation. In this respect analysis and interpretation are primary concerns shared by all researchers in some way or other (Radder 2006, Ulin 1984, van Zoonen 1994). Moreover,
explanation
is a primary motivation and objective in common. For instance, research drawing on German generations of
critical theory
(Burchill et al. 2001) or the Anglo-American pragmatist tradition of empirical research such as
critical realism
(Burnham et al. 2004) are also as preoccupied with explanation – ascertaining cause and effect – as are experimental traditions in cognitive psychology, or their counterparts from Freudian, Jungian, and Lacanian schools of psychoanalysis.
Table 1.1
Academic research objectives
| Qualitative researchers | act on the data by | in order to | |
| analyse/interpret | Deconstructing Generalizing Inferring (Re)assembling | Critique Describe Discover Empower Expand Explain Improve Nuance Recommend Understand | the phenomena the object of analysis policies/law-making social/political debates ideas/debates knowledge groups/communities behaviour/motivations/choices cause and effect truth/s & laws injustice hypotheses |
| Quantitative researchers | act on the data by | in order to | |
| analyse/interpret | Deducing Generalizing Inferring Testing hypotheses Validating | Describe Discover Explain Focus Improve Make causal inferences Refine Replace Predict Recommend Understand |
The visual and written means by which an explanation is made, thought processes by which a conclusion is reached, however, is where paths diverge; between and within these broad bands. For example, interpreting – or analysing statistical evidence based on a statistical
reduction analysis
of the data arrayed as numerical values, is quite different from interpreting – or ‘reading’ the written word or visual images by applying a form of
semiotic
method.
Take a discipline such as history as another example; explaining historical events by consulting people’s diaries, private correspondence, government archives, personal memoirs, travelogues, or charting agrarian or industrial output figures over a given period of time all use different sources, requiring different ways to gather and make sense of the empirical material, residing in official archives or community libraries; coming up with competing explanations of the same historical moment as they do
so. Philosophers of history duly diverge in their view of ‘the’ archive as the only reputable source for empirical research, the relationship between
primary
and
secondary
sources, and what counts as a source when it is a recording of someone speaking.
The ante is upped when quantitative data is integral to prediction; stronger still when predictions have implications for macroeconomic policy decisions by governments, corporate R&D, and households. Economics is an example of one discipline, firmly embedded in quantitative methods, recently put on the defensive as it became apparent that obscure statistical ‘financial instruments’ (e.g. futures) used by stockbrokers and investment banks had no small part to play in the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath (see Lanchester 2010).
Apart from these overlaps in how all researchers are engaged in analysis, interpretation, and explanation in varying degrees, quantitative and qualitative modes line up with and against one another in a number of other ways:
- All would concur that successfully completing any research
project
, large or small, calls upon intertwined skill-sets – analytical, hands-on, and organizational – in upwardly spiralling levels of intricacy and demands on the researcher’s patience, time, and material resources. - Conducting an ‘independent’, ‘original’ piece of research according to certain ‘criteria of excellence’ and within a certain time frame is a major part of successfully completing a research dissertation across the board. It bears pointing out that in the workplace too, academic-level research is also conducted under strict time-pressures; by journalists, political lobbyists, NGOs, central and local governments, think-tanks, PR and marketing firms, and businesses.
- That said, what sets the latter sorts of – applied – research apart from academic work, deadlines aside, is a lively but also enervating tension. On the one hand academic qualifications have the satisfactory completion of an independent piece of research as one of the formal requirements for a university degree. They both entail certain expectations about what the key elements (see
Box 2.1
) are in a research project. - On the other hand, where they diverge from other sorts of research is the stress laid on explicating the theory–method interrelationship and in the degree to which they engage with wider debates as noted above. For any research tradition such pressures are as much philosophical inquiries as they are dry technicalities and organizational hassles. This includes conflicting ideas over what counts as acceptable, what not, and then how the respective
savoir-faire
is best passed on to the next generation. Differences about this relationship become pressing for research students, even before they have settled on a topic. - Another aspect in common, albeit less readily admitted, are respective ebbs and flows in fundamental thinking about research, as both a practical and reflective pursuit. Sea-changes in research practice and conventions are more incremental; once highly regarded ways of conducting research become superseded, returning again in the wake of disenchantment with the once-new trends that supplanted them.
It would be tempting to characterize all aspects of these debates as a stand-off between the new and the old. Whilst there appears to be a chronological progression in
narratives, it is more of a dialectic in that new and old co-mingle; intellectual fashions work in this sense both ways. Much of the time, though, would-be new and so-called old co-habit departments and faculties, sometimes amicably and sometimes less so.
Time now to consider what is at stake when speaking of divides; particularly the one ostensibly marking out quantitative and qualitative research territories for student researchers in the first instance, but also in the theory and practice of everyday research, supervision, and assessment.