Briefing Notes

B: Further Analysis of Research Methods

B3: The obvious truth? Identifying the principles that underpin research

I recently tendered for a contract to conduct research into the training needs of health consultants. The tender requirements were fairly standard apart from one unusual demand. The tender had to include a statement from each of the consultants who would be involved in the project of the principles underpinning their work. This is the first time in twenty-five years of doing qualitative work that I have been asked for any such statement.

The demand was, I think, perfectly reasonable. The education team who commissioned the work all set great store by the ethical framework within which they work and the philosophy of education to which they subscribe. Why should they not ask potential researchers where they stand in relation to such issues? (Not everyone shares my view: the team told me that several tenderers ignored the requirement altogether, announced that they would not provide a response, or offered a corporate reply on behalf of the university department – presumably on the premise that everyone in the department operated to identical principles!)

Expanding this argument a little – it is now widely recognised that qualitative research is never value free (except, possibly by some social anthropologists as discussed below). All researchers have values, prejudices and convictions, and most have a more or less coherent view of what research is about and what they are trying to achieve as researchers. But how often do researchers specify their standpoint or convictions when reporting their research findings? Seldom if ever?

To take one celebrated example from social anthropology, if Margaret Mead had prefaced her study of Coming of age in Samoa by stating her prior conviction, that she would be able to demonstrate the overwhelming influence of cultural factors in upbringing by finding a primitive paradise, would other scholars and scientists have been quite so ready to accept her account of idyllic adolescence? And, would it have needed around sixty years to elapse before the whistle was blown when Derek Freeman concluded that:

"Mead's 'special investigation' of the sexual behaviour of the adolescent girls she was supposed to be studying was, in fact, never undertaken at all. Instead, having been comprehensively hoaxed, she relied on what she had been told by [two adult informants] and made this the information on which she based her best-selling book..."¹

Freeman went on to assert that "the discipline of anthropology ... has tended to accept the reports of ethnographers as entirely empirical statements" raising concern about "the extent to which other ethnographic accounts may have been distorted by doctrinal convictions...". He then quoted with approval Karl Popper's admonition that ... Indefatigable rational criticism of our suppositions ... is of decisive importance ... to save us from the allure of the "obvious truth" of received doctrine.²

A statement of the researcher's principles can set the scene for this type of criticism.

Some principles

So what did I come up with in stating my own working principles? There is only space here for a summary version but I believe:

• that research is fundamentally a social and political process; it is consequently complex and demanding. I am concerned that too many independent consultants appear to regard their research work as unproblematic ... I place great reliance upon listening to the evidence accumulated and try to engage with the real issues. I then try to offer ways forward that can be helpful to the client ...
   
• that all social science research methods have inherent limitations, so that using more than one method (such as observation followed by structured interviews, or questionnaire surveys linked to structured focus groups) is usually appropriate; what is known in the research trade as triangulation
   
• that significant research (and consultancy) engagement should be concerned with trying to achieve positive organisational and individual change. This belief has led me to refuse to engage in consultancy if I suspect I am being used as an accomplice to empire building or power battles, or to steamroller through change against staff resistance. This does not mean that I regard 'pure research' or 'fundamental research' as unimportant; only that these are not fundamentally what interest me
   

As a result of this belief,

• I only seek to get involved in research that has the capacity to positively affect practice. This precept was drawn out of ten years' exposure to what I characterise as 'So what? research' when based at the National Foundation for Educational Research.
   
• At an even more personal level (and learning from feedback provided on my Myers-Briggs personality profile) I only undertake work that I consider to be inherently interesting or challenging.
   

I am not trying to foist these not very profound views off onto readers of this column or anyone else. Instead, I am trying to articulate my views on some aspects of research that are likely to influence what I choose (or seek) to do and how I go about this work. Hopefully, this will enable readers of reports of the research that I am involved in to delve between the lines and to tease out any unintended effects arising from these points. With a little luck this declaration might also start a trend amongst information researchers?

1. FREEMAN, Derek Margaret Mead and the heretic: the making and unmaking of an anthropological myth Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin 1996 xii and 292 [back]

2. POPPER, Karl R. Conjectures and refutations: the growth of scientific knowledge London 1969 vii 16. [back]

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