In all directions of the research process

Back we go to our arrows. We have been drawing arrows from left to right—from one item in one column to another item in the next column to the right. We should feel very free to do this.

First of all, there are few restrictions on where these left-to-right arrows may go. Any limitations that exist would seem to relate to the first two columns. We need to rule out drawing an arrow from constructionism or subjectivism to positivism (or, therefore, post­positivism), since positivism is objectivist by definition. Without a thoroughly objectivist epistemology, positivism would not be positivism as we understand it today. Nor would we want to draw an arrow from objectivism or subjectivism to phenomenology. Constructionism and phenomenology are so intertwined that one could hardly be phenomenological while espousing either an objectivist or a subjectivist epistemology. And postmodernism well and truly jettisons any vestiges of an objectivist view of knowledge and meaning. Other than that, as we draw our arrows from column to column, it would seem that ‘the sky’s the limit’. Certainly, if it suits their purposes, any of the theoretical perspectives could make use of any of the methodologies, and any of the methodologies could make use of any of the methods. There are typical strings, to be sure, and we have noted two of them in Figure 2 and Figure 3, but ‘typical’ does not mean ‘mandatory’.

Secondly, we can draw arrows from a particular item to more than one item in the column to the right. Historically, objectivism, constructionism and subjectivism have each informed quite a number of different perspectives. Similarly, one theoretical perspective often comes to be embodied in a number of methodologies. Symbolic interactionism is a case in point. It has informed both ethnography and grounded theory and we might well draw arrows from that theoretical perspective to each of those methodologies. Again, while critical inquiry will certainly be linked to action research, we can also draw an arrow from critical inquiry to ethnography. Yes, the critical form of inquiry has come to be embodied in ethnography too, transforming it in the process. Now it is no longer a characteristically uncritical form of research that merely seeks to understand a culture. It is critical ethnography, a methodology that strives to unmask hegemony and address oppressive forces. In the same way, there can be a feminist ethnography or a postmodernist ethnography.

Still, we should not be so carried away with our sense of freedom in drawing arrows from left to right that we forget to draw arrows in other directions as well. Our arrows can fly from right to left too. In terms of what informs what, going from left to right would seem a logical progression. At the same time, in describing our piece of research, we found our starting point in methods and methodology. This suggests that, to mark the chronological succession of events in our research, the arrows may need to be drawn from right to left as well.

Certainly, they may. Not too many of us embark on a piece of social research with epistemology as our starting point. ‘I am a constructionist. Therefore, I will investigate . . .’ Hardly. We typically start with a real- life issue that needs to be addressed, a problem that needs to be solved, a question that needs to be answered. We plan our research in terms of that issue or problem or question. What, we go on to ask, are the further issues, problems or questions implicit in the one we start with? What, then, is the aim and what are the objectives of our research? What strategy seems likely to provide what we are looking for? What does that strategy direct us to do to achieve our aims and objectives? In this way our research question, incorporating the purposes of our research, leads us to methodology and methods.

We need, of course, to justify our chosen methodology and methods. In the end, we want outcomes that merit respect. We want the observers of our research to recognise it as sound research. Our conclusions need to stand up. On some understandings of research (and of truth), this will mean that we are after objective, valid and generalisable conclusions as the outcome of our research. On other understandings, this is never realisable. Human knowledge is not like that. At best, our outcomes will be suggestive rather than conclusive. They will be plausible, perhaps even convincing, ways of seeing things—and, to be sure, helpful ways of seeing things—but certainly not any ‘one true way’ of seeing things. We may be positivists or non-positivists, therefore. Either way, we need to be concerned about the process we have engaged in; we need to lay that process out for the scrutiny of the observer; we need to defend that process as a form of human inquiry that should be taken seriously. It is this that sends us to our theoretical perspective and epistemology and calls upon us to expound them incisively. From methods and methodology to theoretical perspective and epistemology, then. Now our arrows are travelling from right to left.

Speaking in this vein sounds as if we create a methodology for ourselves—as if the focus of our research leads us to devise our own ways of proceeding that allow us to achieve our purposes. That, as it happens, is precisely the case. In a very real sense, every piece of research is unique and calls for a unique methodology. We, as the researcher, have to develop it.

If that is the case, why are we bothering with the plethora of methodologies and methods set forth for us so profusely that they seem like William James’s ‘blooming, buzzing confusion’? Why don’t we just sit down and work out for ourselves how we are to go about it?

In the end, that is precisely what we have to do. Yet a study of how other people have gone about the task of human inquiry serves us well and is surely indispensable. Attending to recognised research designs and their various theoretical underpinnings exercises a formative influence upon us. It awakens us to ways of research we would never otherwise have conceived of. It makes us much more aware of what is possible in research. Even so, it is by no means a matter of plucking a methodology off the shelf. We acquaint ourselves with the various methodologies. We evaluate their presuppositions. We weigh their strengths and weaknesses. Having done all that and more besides, we still have to forge a methodology that will meet our particular purposes in this research. One of the established methodologies may suit the task that confronts us. Or perhaps none of them do and we find ourselves drawing on several methodologies, moulding them into a way of proceeding that achieves the outcomes we look to. Perhaps we need to be more inventive still and create a methodology that in many respects is quite new. Even if we tread this track of innovation and invention, our engagement with the various methodologies in use will have played a crucial educative role.

Arrows right to left as well as left to right. What about arrows up and down? Yes, that too. Renowned critical theorist Jurgen Habermas carried on a debate with hermeneuticist Hans-Georg Gadamer over many years and out of that interplay there developed for Habermas a ‘critical hermeneutics’. Here we have critical theory coming to inform hermeneutics. In our four-column model, the arrow would rise up the same column (‘theoretical perspective’) from critical inquiry to hermeneutics. Similarly, we can talk of critical feminism or feminist critical inquiry, of postmodernist feminism or postmodernist critical inquiry. There is plenty of scope for arrows up and down.

Source: Michael J Crotty (1998), The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process, SAGE Publications Ltd; First edition.

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