Hi Chris, Ken and others
These are important questions and one discipline which can be helpful is to maintain the distinction between methods (i.e. interview) and methodology (qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods). While many technical and empirical sciences, e.g. medicine and engineering, use both terms synonymously this is because a tradition and convergence on ways of doing things leaves no doubt as to the overall epistemological and ontological commitments of such fields - in short, such fields (I speak from working with an engineering faculty for two years and medicine for three years) talk of research designs, methods, methodology, relatively indiscriminately. In the social sciences (I'll include my own fields of anthropology, education, but not linguistics), there is a real need to rationalize, i.e. make explicit the methodological commitments one has, which themselves serve as a logic or rationale for methods one uses. Method Invention, in the sense of coming up with new ways of gathering data or more generally accessing the world, is a relatively unconstrained enterprise, i.e. we need put no limits on it, so even cultural probes, visualisation strategies, etc., will be acceptable in as much as there is some coherence with the epistemological and ontological commitments that inform our methodological affiliations as researchers. For example, I have made the case in two recent articles (Design Issues http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/desi.2008.24.4.88 and Artifact http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a906181402~db=all~order=page; I also alluded to the value of pragmatism in a previous life of applied linguistics http://ahh.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/4/3/283 and for qualitative methodology http://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=126256420458728;res=E-LIBRARY) that pragmatism - properly understood - provides such a methodological rationale for mixed methods in design research. Hope this contributes
Dr Gavin Melles
Research Fellow, Faculty of Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Office: 613 92146851
Skype: gavin.melles
Member of Australian French Association for Science & Technology (AFAS)
Associate Fellow, Communications Research Institute (CRI)
http://www.communication.org.au/
Regional Council Member (2008-2011) for Adult, Community and Further Education AFCE), Victoria
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