Dear Gavin, Chris, Ken, Teena, Keith an others,
I can see where Gavin's argument goes but it doesn't ring a bell. It
ascribes more to careful thinking than I see in practice.
I'm more convinced that the slip between 'methods' and 'methodology' is
based on the individual human advantages of lazy, advantage-grabbing
conversational habits of talking.
A more plausible and practical explanation, for me at least, goes as follow:
1. All theses have been required to have a section in which the candidate
demonstrates their competence in the study and choice of methods of
analysis and information collection. This has been naturally and obviously
titled 'Methodology' (the study of methods).
2. This title of the chapter is commonly used in discussion and idle chat in
a wide variety of ways. For example, 'Have you done your Methodology yet?'
3. These sentences using 'Methodology' that make accurate sense to the
word-careful are easily literally interpreted in other more simplistic ways
by learner and word-careless that enable them to think and act to reduce the
effort of learning, thinking and study as well as to gain other personal
advantages such as from posing.
4. One outcome is those who do not know start to think that 'Methodology' ==
'Methods'
5. This is naturally followed by a reduction in quality of the PhD in
depth of understanding and quality of outcomes in many ways. This is in part
because it removes the need to study method and in part because it
simplifies understanding of individual methods.
6. A further quality reducing issue that follows the same path of lazy and
careless simplification is the way that the necessarily separate ways of
thinking of the different areas of methods associated with data collection,
data processing, data analysis, concept formation, conceptual analysis,
epistemological analysis and ontological analysis become conflated into
'research methodology'. This is also done to gain the 'benefits' of lazy and
careless thinking and reduction in effort of understanding.
7. The multiple individual advantages (for academics and students) of taking
this position have lead to it being used widely (the false 'benefits'
include reduction in difficulty of PhD and research in general, easier
teaching of research methodology, more simplistic conversation requiring
less care, more simplistic view of the different types of methods and their
differences, ease of overclaiming knowledge and status, and boasting etc).
I feel the above offers is a more likely explanation of the phenomena on
four grounds:
a) The driving processes are obvious and causal
b) There are obvious and substantial gains to participating individuals
c) I've seen it happen and done it myself
b) It is easy to test and the test demonstrates the process
I agree with Gavin that the consequences in terms of error and
epistemological tension are less in the science disciplines, but that
doesn't offer an explanation of 'why' in terms of human behavior and its
messy carelessness and advantage seeking.
The remedy is increasing the need.
Thoughts?
Best wishes,
Terry
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gavin
Melles
Sent: Sunday, 14 December 2008 1:07 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Inventing Research Methods
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=pag
e; 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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