Dear Martin,
Thank you for your message.
You wrote,
' I do find myself wondering how the Frascati Manual would apply to a
researcher in the field of Literature who was for instance looking into an
aspect of the writings of Jane Austen. Perhaps it would come in useful if
the research involved counting how many times the letter 'e' was used in
Pride and Prejudice?'
Ignoring your apparent sarcasm, the role of the Frascati Manual is very
different from what you seem to imply by the above.
Someone looking at aspects of the writing of Jane Austen could do so in many
ways; ranging across a wide range of analytical methods of different levels
of quality and validity: Structuralist/semiotic analysis; Marxist criticism;
Post-Colonial analysis; Dramatic Construction; Gender/Queer studies
criticism; Post-structuralism... all the way to the rather more vernacular
methods involving 'I liked it/didn't like it cos of that dress she was
wearing', or 'the story was too complicated', or 'that's old fashioned crap,
what I like is rap'.
Their 'findings' might be 'published' in one of a variety of places that
provided different measures of the quality of the research: these might
range from prestigious literary journals such as Poetics, Critical Review,
Cambridge Quarterly, Journal of Australian Studies, to the News of the
World newspaper, and all the way to Beano, graffiti on the Pompidou Centre
or scratches on a toilet wall.
A question then arises as to which of these kinds of 'research' should be
considered high quality professional/ academic research that should be
funded or supported by policies because they improves socio-economic
outcomes similar to funding hospitals or clean water supply etc. A rider to
this is understanding which funding and policy strategies are successful in
improving such research outcomes.
To be able to answer these kinds of questions requires:
1. Identifying and defining the best ways to gather and analyse information
about high quality professional academic research.
2. Identifying what should be counted as professional high quality academic
research.
3. Creating the most useful 'necessary and sufficient' definition of
research that will apply exactly in terms of theory consideration, and
equitably in statistical terms, across all disciplines and practices. This
definition of research must be the bet. It must be a more precise and more
carefully considered definition of research than that considered parochially
within the blinkered lens of each discipline. In essence, such a definition
of research must get much closer to an absolute definition of research than
that of the individual disciplines because it must address the same issues
as the individual disciplines and much more.
4. Identifying activities that whilst being colloquially or culturally
referred to as 'research' are not high quality professional/ academic
research from the point of view of the above questions.
The purpose of the Frascati Manual is addressing these 4 points for those
funding or creating policy for research. It has been internationally
supported by the 34 countries of the OECD to be the evolving central
reference of 'what is research and how to collect information about it' for
over 50 years.
For a person undertaking a literature review of Jane Austen, the Frascati
Manual has a different reference role. The Frascati Manual provides a
reference definition of research at a higher level than the parochially
identified definition of research within their discipline, and provides an
understanding of how to best create, undertake and present their research to
maximise its quality as assessed in research surveys. The latter being
mostly guided by the OECD Frascati Manual.
This higher level role of the Frascati Manual is why it becomes so
interesting when it prefers the term 'experimental development' to 'clinical
research'. I suggest it indicates it is time for design researchers to
rethink their use of the term 'clinical research'.
Best regards,
Terence
==
Dr Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
PhD, B.A. (Hons) Eng, P.G.C.E
School of Design and Art, Curtin University, Western Australia
Honorary Fellow, IEED, Management School, Lancaster University, UK
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks, Western Australia 6030
[log in to unmask] +61 (0)4 3497 5848
ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
==
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Salisbury, Martin
Sent: Sunday, 15 March 2015 11:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]; 'Ken Friedman'; 'PhD-Design'; 'David Sless'
Subject: RE: Basic, applied, and clinical research
Dear Terry,
I'm happy to leave you and Ken to continue this tennis match. I recommend
Frascati but only if it is well chilled and drunk with a little chicken or
seafood. I am however very taken with the wonderful phrase you used, "Think
about it and feel your way through this." It would make a great slogan for
those of us who are keen to encourage research through design (we tactile
types).
I do find myself wondering how the Frascati Manual would apply to a
researcher in the field of Literature who was for instance looking into an
aspect of the writings of Jane Austen. Perhaps it would come in useful if
the research involved counting how many times the letter 'e' was used in
Pride and Prejudice?
Looking forward to the Research Through Design conference here in Cambridge
in a few days,
Best wishes,
Martin
Professor Martin Salisbury
Course Leader, MA Children's Book Illustration Director, The Centre for
Children's Book Studies Cambridge School of Art
0845 196 2351
[log in to unmask]
http://www.cambridgemashow.com
http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/microsites/ccbs.html
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