Delimiting the concept of research: an ethical perspective (original) (raw)

Thinking about research: frameworks, ethics and scholarship

Understanding Medical Education, 2007

• Research is concerned with critical or scientific enquiry. It differs from audit, as research is concerned with discovering the right thing to do, and audit, with ensuring that it is done right. Evaluation aims to assess the worth or value of something. • Theoretical perspectives provide the framework for research and inform the basic assumptions that guide the research. A theoretical perspective encompasses important elements: ontology, epistemology and methodology. • Can research combine qualitative and quantitative research methods? One perspective is that the ontological and epistemological assumptions of these approaches are incompatible, and therefore it is not feasible to combine methods. An opposing view sees the two approaches as compatible, and combined approaches become feasible • Researchers are expected to minimise the risk of harm or discomfort to people. Harm from educational or social research is more likely to take the form of psychological distress than physical injury. Research that aims to be published requires an ethical review. What Is Research? Research has been defined as 'a search or investigation directed to the discovery of some fact by careful consideration or study of a subject; a course of critical or scientific inquiry'.(4) This definition may sound straightforward, in that most researchers would agree that they are involved in a critical inquiry of something, but some would argue that their aim is not to establish facts but to increase or change understanding about something. How does research differ from audit? Research is concerned with discovering the right thing to do, and audit, with ensuring that it is done right.(5) Following this definition, audit focuses on what is given and asks questions about the given, while research has the freedom to ask questions about the given, including 'Is this the best or only way to do something?' How does research differ from evaluation? According to Clarke,(6) what differentiates evaluation from research is the question of purpose. 'An evaluation is action orientated. It is conducted to determine the value or impact of a policy, programme, practice, intervention or service, with a view to making recommendations for change'. Robson(7) states that 'to evaluate is to assess the worth or value of something'. Following this definition, evaluation is about setting out to make a judgement. Going back to our definition of research, there is no mention of research leading to judgement, but to the discovery of findings by critical inquiry. Evaluation research is part of research, but in evaluation the aim involves assessing the worth of something. Theoretical Frameworks in Education and the Social Sciences Kneebone(8) published a personal view about his attempt to engage with the education and social science literature. He wrote, 'At first and to my great surprise I found this literature almost impenetrable, of course it was peppered with unfamiliar words … I had the disquieting sensation of moving into alien territory, where familiar landmarks had disappeared'. Kneebone came to the realisation that all his medical training had been based within one view of science, the positivist paradigm, and that this was a very narrow and limited view. He ended with a plea to include an exploration of what the humanities have to offer the medical curriculum, and also with explicit guidance on how to gain access to this world. The aim of this chapter is to make this other 'world' penetrable. The focus of this section is to present some of the frameworks within which quantitative and qualitative research is conducted in education and the social sciences. Quantitative research in education and social science is typically represented by

Thinking About Research: Theoretical Perspectives, Ethics and Scholarship

Evidence, Theory and Practice, 2013

Oh happy day - what makes research count as research

2010

Use of language, like so many other things in life that presupposes human interaction, is a difficult matter indeed: very difficult, to be precise. It is so difficult because language, as an elastic matter, does not stand still. It slips away. You cannot control it. Words are used and abused, twisted and distorted, caressed and catapulted into discursive orbits where they either feel at home, abandoned, or alien. We are all familiar with everyday frustrations. The moment when anxiety breaks loose when you repeatedly confront a site and situation in which words (as concepts) are being treated without the desired care and commitment. Words, contrary to that bizarre bad schlagersong, do come easy. Often, they come too easy. One of the current catch-all phrases in discourse on the production of culture is that real deep down and dirty word: research. All of sudden, regardless of what it is that is being tried to achieve, the talk that both defines and describes these acts is using a great deal of time and space to dress itself up as research. If there is nothing else to say, habit tells us to label it as research, then either fade away, or in the more active version, sprint towards the nearest emergency exit. The basic motivation behind the loose and inaccurate talk on research this' and research that' is not that awkward to track down. The internal logic and the inherent 'newspeak' of post-industrial societies turning and churning themselves into network societies are very strongly focused on the creative class and knowledge production as a source of, that ever-important, extra value. At the same time, we are reminded how we are surrounded by research, because when you break it down and take away all the layers of window dressings, research is like breathing: you breath in and then out. A process, during which the magic of the 3 Ts are present: we witness how something is translated, transformed and transmitted. Something has changed, something new, interesting and doubtlessly important is produced. However, unlike breathing in and out, research (when it is to be counted as research), is an activity that is grounded on our ability to critically, yet constructively relate to and reflect upon our being-in-the-world. In other words, it does not take place automatically and it is not automatically what it wants or claims to be. To put the finger where it is expected to hurt: not everything we do is in itself great, meaningful and successful. And no, not everyone is supposed to be doing it either. A set of cruel realisations that, for many reasons and through many seasons, comes across as a horrible surprise. What? Research is not the answer to everything? Whaaaat? Isn't everyone everywhere supposed to do magnificent research all the time?

The Philosophy of Research: An Overview

Langlit, 2019

Studies about the technicalities of conducting research are still going on at different levels all over the world. The focus of this paper is the philosophical foundations of research that many a researcher ignores while engaged in research work. Since knowledge is awareness acquired by means of education or experience, it enables one to answer certain questions. Therefore, one must be able to answer any question related to anything one may come across. The accidental falling of an apple brought a question (Why did it fall down?) into Newton"s brain and it paved the way for the theory of gravitation. Most of the great inventions and discoveries were accidental or by chance. However, a research begins with a question, works on a theoretical basis, and adds something to the existing body of knowledge. Some questions like "Who is God?", "Is there God?", etc. may or may not get correct answers. Such ontological questions are related to reality which may be either "single" or "multiple" as Ontology gets bifurcated into. On practical grounds, in a research, Ontology leads to Epistemology, Methodology, and Axiology. To be scientific in the academic sense, a research has to be in line with these philosophical concepts and the models called 'research paradigms', the parametric dimensions of research philosophy, set and accepted as norms by the scholars. The moot point is whether a scholar can break the shell of the norms of 'research foundation'!

Research in Action: Enquiry and Debate

Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 2008

This contribution argues that academic researchers operate in two contexts: the context of discovery and the context of justification. The contribution will elaborate on this distinction and thereby illustrate how research actually evolves and 'works'. An understanding of this dual context will help researchers to be smarter in developing their own research.

Comparative "Research": A Modest Proposal concerning the Object of Ethics Regulation

PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2007

Complementing the broader project of treating human subjects research regulation (including "informed consent") as an ethnographic object, this article scrutinizes the category research: that about which research subjects may (in some way) be informed, to which they may (or may not) consent, and in which they may (variously) participate. What is "research"? When does it begin and end? What is the relationship between its demarcations as a regulatory object and its demarcations in the everyday practices of knowledge production? Federal research ethics regulations take for granted that research can be distinguished from nonresearch and subjected to distinctive constraints. The regulations also presume an idealized scientific method with predetermined spaces, times, personnel, and procedures. Although such clarity is difficult for many kinds of human subjects research, it is impossible for ethnographic fieldwork. A modest proposal is offered concerning with whom ethnographers might make common cause. [definition of research; social and behavioral research ethics; participant-observation; new ethnographic objects; IRBs; audit culture; libel by fiction] Research means a systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge. [DHHS 2005: 45 CFR 46.102(d)] Anthropology, or anyway social or cultural anthropology, is in fact rather more something one picks up as one goes along year after year trying to figure out what it is and how to practice it than something one has instilled in one through "a systematic method to obtain obedience" or formalized "train[ing] by instruction and control." [Geertz 1995:97, quoting Foucault] * * * * * The fieldworker must choose, shape, prune, discard this and collect finer detail on that, much as a novelist works who finds some minor

Delimiting the concept of research: an ethical perspective (original) (raw)

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