Read any useful research lately, unanswered research questions
From:
Ron Lubensky
Date:
Jul 19 10:08 UTC
Short link
Hi Tom,
At 10:26 PM 18/07/2008, you wrote:
>I believe that the best research questions start with a hypothesis.
>Then, through some creative experimentation, you can test that
>hypothesis, and arrive at conclusions. A good approach might be one
>that psychologists take.
You are describing only the research tradition based on the
scientific method. But in interpretive, constructivist and critical
traditions, the research questions search more for deep understanding
and meaning rather than just predictable causation. Also, these other
research traditions do not tend to reduce real-world phenomena to
simple factors, instead dealing with their holistic complexity and
"messiness", with methodologies that are more open-ended. The "stuff"
of the study tends to more qualitative than quantitative. As a
starting example, take a look at the Wikipedia article about a
methodology called "Ethnography".
Experimentation implies at last some control of the phenomenon under
study. In most situations that is not possible--that's probably why
we see so many "comparative analyses" in political science. And
generalising to a real-world situation from a staged experiment is
often problematic. Just because we can't isolate "variables" doesn't
mean that authentic situations can't inform practice. The research
just has to be approached in a different way.
If the most valuable questions to you are about discovering universal
truths, then that is quite okay. But there are others in the research
community who have quite different motivations and epistemological
beliefs and who benefit from scholarly enterprise that is more
experiential rather than experimental.