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dear all
thanks to all your comments on the MNR approach.
Farah, Angela, Lory and I are working on a MNR on the concept of community
across different research traditions. we are now about to examine seminal
papers and start building our draft meta-narrative.
I would like to thanks Trisha for the very useful point about the difference
between research traditions (e.g. Marxism) and research disciplines (e.g.
sociology). Looking at the literature through those lens is much better and
will highlight how different meta-narratives cross research disciplines.
I would also like to take up a point Farah made in earlier comments around
the fact the research traditions and disciplines are actually politically
embedded. we should perhaps take more notice of the fact that there is an
awful lot of 'politics' surrounding the production of research. one potential
problem with this of course is that some research is promoted whilst other
research is put aside. so the point here is that research is not just driven
by empirical or theoretical or sometimes policy innovations, but also by
politics. one can just think about the controversy around 'big society' and
the allegation that Arts and Humanities Research Council pushed research on
this direction only.
going back the practical problems of conducting MNR, i am interested in
comments on middle range theories. It looks to me as if there are different
levels at which one can conduct analysis. one is the level of Kuhn's paradigm
when he talks about Newton and Einstein, so in other words, huge paradigm
shifts. another is the level of our work, which involves more middle range
theories and associated shifts or changes. but what is exactly a middle range
theory? as somebody else in hte list pointed out (Gill?) is not so clear at
the edges. it would be interesting to debate this more fully i think, and
that might actually lead to understand more about the relationship between
middle range and macro theories (e.g. Einstein's relativity). one interesting
question is: what is the relationship between these? do middle range theories
actually lead to macro theories?
the last point i would like to make is about Trisha's idea looking at
Foucault. i have read a little bit about Foucault and there are parallels.
perhaps the notion of discourse from Foucault and paradigm have parallels and
there are a range of archival methodologies based on Foucault's work which
look at the development of discourses over time and at how these have
changed. it might be quite interesting to take this on in the future.
thanks again for all your comments.
Marcello
Marcello Bertotti, BSc, MA, PhD, Research Fellow
Institute for Health and Human Development,University of East London, UH 250,
Water Lane, Stratford, London, E15 4LZ
Tel.020 8223 4139; 07900 593 655; www.uel.ac.uk/ihhd
________________________________
From: Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards on
behalf of McCourt, Christine
Sent: Fri 22/07/2011 10:13
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: meta-narrative syst rev: responding to Farah
Dear all
I have used the Joanna Briggs software to conduct a meta-synthesis and
colleagues have used it to conduct a systematic review of mixed methods
research. We found the software very useful in some ways - it creates a good
structure for the reviews - but it also had limitations and bugs. (We were
early users of it, so bugs may have been solved.)
I'd be interested to know whether others have found useful/helpful software
to support such reviews. I have a number of postgraduate students who would
be interested in ideas about this, and I need to consider whether to use
software for a review that we are currently planning.
Thanks!
Dr Christine McCourt
Professor of Maternal and Child Health
City University London
Philpot Street, London E1 2EA
Tel: (44)0207 040 5863
Mob: 0791 235 1476
Skype: chrismccourt
On 21/07/2011 17:05, "Trisha Greenhalgh" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Sorry it's taken me a while to get round to this reply. I've left
Farah's original posting in full below, and also cut and pasted bits of it to
prompt some specific answers:
"First, It's difficult to create a narrative based on a dialogue
across disciplines because researchers in any given paradigm frequently talk
past one another because how fundamentally different their underlying
assumptions are - a sort of dialogue of the deaf (issue of
incommensurability). This is not the always the case of course. And part of
the objective of the narrative itself is to identify and capture where there
is a sense of this 'dialogue of the deaf' in the literature. Were you able to
do this in your work?"
Really good point. What you're saying (I think) is that in addition
to tracing narratives as they unfold within a discipline, we might also trace
the 'talking past each other' that occurs in some [weak] attempts at
cross-disciplinary work. No we didn't do that systematically and I suspect
we could and should. I might be wrong here. Let's see how it plays out.
---
"The dialogue within disciplines is difficult to capture as well.
Trisha, it seemed that in the empirical literature there was often agreed
upon procedures in the discipline and practice of patient records/innovations
for examples during a state of normal science (sort of the idea that you must
conduct/understand procedures in this or that way to get your PhD in a
topic). However, in the social science and theoretical based literature,
there is often no agreed upon procedures. For example, within sociology
Weber's classes and Marx's classes are not produced by the same procedures."
Ah, but within a discipline there are different research traditions.
You can't say 'sociology' is a meta-narrative but you might say that 'Marxist
approaches to access in higher education' is a meta-narrative. A research
tradition is defined as defined "as a coherent body of theoreticalknowledge
and a linked set of primary studies in which successive studies are
influenced by the findings of previous studies" (this was in our 2004
diffusion of innovations paper - it was my phrase but we cited Kuhn 1962 for
the idea).
---
"Second, and more importantly for me is the criticism that it might
be the case that a 'scientific' breakthrough or anomalous positions will seem
ridiculous at a given time. Anomalous results are often explained and used by
others much later on - others working in different and new paradigms perhaps.
This is because there is a clear social dimension to science. Anomalies are
therefore not falsifications (from a positivist perspective) - because
paradigm shifts are determined by sociological determinants. Everything from
the economy to departmental politics of the individual and university. It can
be argued that often truth is compromised/disappears and knowledge is wholly
socially determined and dependent upon beliefs of a time and place. I think
that Popper would agree (and describe this as a regulatory ideal in science).
How do we accommodate this social dimension in the narrative and not
artificially emphasize or de-emphasize some works over others? How can we use
this criticism to better understand what is seminal? Is there a way that we
can examine to what extent policy and published policy focused papers utilize
certain theoretical papers at a given time over others or integrate a
historical context in our review to better understand the social dimension? "
I don't follow this - can you give us an example?
---
"A problem with Kuhn and the difficulty for me is that it is unclear
how general to make it (where are the boundaries between sociology and
anthropology) and how far to extend the idea of breaks between one paradigm
to another. In more localized contexts you can demonstrate an underlying
continuity to scientific enterprise and set limits to the influence of social
factors. But what about cases where common elements are just not there? How
effective is the discipline as a unit of analysis? "
I think if you shift your unit of analysis to the meta-narrative
(which maps to the research tradition) rather than the discipline, you might
make progress! Giz an example and I'll have a go! Re difference between
sociology and anthropology, I recall an email correspondence with the
unforgettable Mary Douglas a few years ago, in which she conceded that these
disciplines had begun in very different places both theoretically and
methodologically but they're moving towards each other.
---
"Foucault (archeological analysis/the order of things), as you
suggest, responds to some of the issues- but more on this another time
perhaps."
Personally I'm dying for a thread on how Foucault informs
meta-narrative review. NB this bit probably won't make it very far into the
official publication guidance as we're aiming for BMJ :-).
---
"As for sorting things into piles manually - we aim to do this using
Eppi Reviewer 4 software in our review- we'll let you know how this goes. "
Best of luck. Can you blog the experience? I do recall trying to do
it automatically and ending up thinking that it was more efficient to just
print and shuffle. HOW will you use the software? Geoff Wong I know uses
software for his sorting, but I quite like paper.
HTH
Trish
-----Original Message-----
From: Farah Jamal [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 04 July 2011 09:10
To: [log in to unmask]; Trisha Greenhalgh
Cc: Farah Jamal
Subject: Re: meta-narrative syst rev
I'm Farah, a research fellow at IHHD working with Marcello on the
AHRC Connected Communities meta narrative review. Trisha, your description
of how you went about your reviews was very helpful. You've also prompted a
v. engaging discussion. There are further complexities that I'm trying to
grapple with and maybe you can shed light on how you approached these issues
in your reviews. Aside from this, I'm especially interested in how to place
the meta-narrative review more appropriately in the larger literature on the
history of ideas and the philosophy of science. The issues I discuss
hereafter (in a non-coherent way - my apologise for this) emerge from the
complexity of conducting a meta-narrative review of strictly theoretical
literature on 'communities'.
I found that at the beginning of this review I was thinking about how
the literature piles on top of each other - emphasizing the time dimension of
the narrative - unknowingly I was taking on a naïve interpretation of Newton
- 'standing on the heads of giants'. However, the history of science does not
function in a linear progressive accumulation and this creates problems in
the way to operationalize the review.
First, It's difficult to create a narrative based on a dialogue
across disciplines because researchers in any given paradigm frequently talk
past one another because how fundamentally different their underlying
assumptions are - a sort of dialogue of the deaf (issue of
incommensurability). This is not the always the case of course. And part of
the objective of the narrative itself is to identify and capture where there
is a sense of this 'dialogue of the deaf' in the literature. Were you able to
do this in your work?
The dialogue within disciplines is difficult to capture as well.
Trisha, it seemed that in the empirical literature there was often agreed
upon procedures in the discipline and practice of patient records/innovations
for examples during a state of normal science (sort of the idea that you must
conduct/understand procedures in this or that way to get your PhD in a
topic). However, in the social science and theoretical based literature,
there is often no agreed upon procedures. For example, within sociology
Weber's classes and Marx's classes are not produced by the same procedures.
Second, and more importantly for me is the criticism that it might be
the case that a 'scientific' breakthrough or anomalous positions will seem
ridiculous at a given time. Anomalous results are often explained and used by
others much later on - others working in different and new paradigms perhaps.
This is because there is a clear social dimension to science. Anomalies are
therefore not falsifications (from a positivist perspective) - because
paradigm shifts are determined by sociological determinants. Everything from
the economy to departmental politics of the individual and university. It can
be argued that often truth is compromised/disappears and knowledge is wholly
socially determined and dependent upon beliefs of a time and place. I think
that Popper would agree (and describe this as a regulatory ideal in science).
How do we accommodate this social dimension in the narrative and not
artificially emphasize or de-emphasize some works over others? How can we use
this criticism to better understand what is seminal? Is there a way that we
can examine to what extent policy and published policy focused papers utilize
certain theoretical papers at a given time over others or integrate a
historical context in our review to better understand the social dimension?
A problem with Kuhn and the difficulty for me is that it is unclear
how general to make it (where are the boundaries between sociology and
anthropology) and how far to extend the idea of breaks between one paradigm
to another. In more localized contexts you can demonstrate an underlying
continuity to scientific enterprise and set limits to the influence of social
factors. But what about cases where common elements are just not there? How
effective is the discipline as a unit of analysis?
Foucault (archeological analysis/the order of things), as you
suggest, responds to some of the issues- but more on this another time
perhaps.
As for sorting things into piles manually - we aim to do this using
Eppi Reviewer 4 software in our review- we'll let you know how this goes.
Thanks again for stimulating discussion Marcello, Paul and Trisha.
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