Dear Ken and list:

I believe that implicit in your posting and some posts it addressed about whether market “research” or consumer “research” is design “Research” (big “R” research?) is the important concept of generalizability. 

Systematic gathering of information to answer one specific question such as people’s ideas/attitudes/feelings/behaviors about a specific context/product/service can yield important insights into one important albeit limited question. 

This kind of study is qualitatively different from systematic gathering of information to answer a generalizable question that covers many similar situations/contexts/products/services/messages in that in generalizable study the inferences are broader and the crossing of various related boundaries requires additional kinds of proof using additional tools such as inferential statistics, randomization, and elimination of alternative answers through reason or study. Often laboratory experiments will be constructed to remove the information gathering from the “real world” in pursuit of (among other things) generalizability. 

I think this is one important distinction we are tripping over here in calling one kind of systematic investigation “Research” and another kind of systematic study NOT “Research.” I have mentioned this before and cannot take credit for the concept of generalizability as part of what defines Research as it is an important distinction between what requires Research oversight (IRB) and what does not require research oversight in the United States (generalizable study requires oversight, product improvement study does not).

For example, if generalizabilities' relationship to what defines research is an insight, it places important qualifications in fields such as ethnography, which you mentioned. Generalizability is a concern in ethnographic studies. How does one know that what is true for X group is equally true of Y? What leads you to believe the truths discovered in context A apply to many or all similar contexts? I'm not implying these are unanswerable, but they are important qualifications that need attention. 

On THIS basis I would label some market “studies” NOT Research because they neither use methods to confirm that their information covers more that the small sample group/population being studied nor intent to address more than the single question/object/process that was their concern. However, in this hypothetical scenario it is the methods that disqualify it more than the scope (see below). I would NOT disqualify it as Research because it was not done by PhD certified Design Researchers or because it served commerce/the marketplace. I’m not saying you proposed this, but it is a tone of some earlier remarks.

Even with what I have said above I am not sure I would quickly define generalizable research as “Research” and non-generalizable research as NOT “Research” because research is a process of investigation where many individual studies can easily lead to generalizable knowledge (properly controlled and analyzed, case studies for example) and in turn, generalizable principles can be studied in very specific situations (complete population in a single context, market research for example) where they are proven to not hold true thus raising new questions or provoking new hypotheses. In this I depart with my government's line in the sand. Generalizability is an important issue but not the defining one, in my opinion.

“It’s all research” is not what I would propose either. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on “Scientific Method” (http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2015/entries/scientific-method/) has some nice general but functional limits that might define Research as something that applies "scientific methods," and my recent paper “Design Research Pioneer Josef Albers: a case for design research” identifies and uses "scientific methods" to define research and propose some distinct qualities that might specifically define Design Research. It’s on my academia.edu page (https://www.academia.edu/23872579/Design_Research_Pioneer_Josef_Albers_a_case_for_design_research). To save you hopping on the internet, here's a paragraph from that paper:

In his response Albers did not reject the label “scientific” while being careful
to qualify or add to it the concept of aesthetic insights. The descriptions of
Albers’ methods as “scientific” were made at a time when a single scientific
method was more commonly envisioned than today. Today’s scholars would
be more nuanced. The National Academy of Sciences has recognized that
there is not a single “scientific method” but a “body of methods” particular
to scientists’ work such as formation of a hypothesis, careful and thorough
examination of the hypothesis using relevant data, and reporting of
results (Committee on Science & Public, 2009). The Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy entry on “Scientific Method”, while obviously philosophical in
orientation, has also noted the devolution of a clearly defined, single scientific
method while at the same time observing that science education at all levels
continues to teach a scientific method of roughly five steps: observation,
hypothesis formation, examination of evidence to test the hypothesis, analysis
of test results, and presentation of findings (Anderson & Hepburn, 2015).
Lately, some have noted that in their most general form scientific methods are
the methods used to formulate knowledge of any kind. What the Stanford Encyclopedia
entry concludes is that what distinguishes methods as scientific is
the rigor and care with which knowledge is formed: the systematic examination
of relevant data, the care in excluding alternative explanations, the rigor
in reducing error, and the reasoned connections to other data. Thus scientific
methods may be seen as a subset of epistemology that focuses on answering
questions through methodical study. For purpose of this paper, methods will
be considered scientific which include systematic exploration, examination,
and demonstration of a hypothesis through empirical data with reported results.
This paper will argue that over time Albers developed and used scientific
methods in his teaching and in his personal work to do research.

“Answering questions through methodical study” is more concise than, but similar to, Bunge’s definition of research that you quoted. I prefer “answering questions” to Bunge’s “search for knowledge” because it better describes what actually happens: not many people are wandering around blankly searching for something, anything, to pop out. Mostly it’s questions or hypotheses that come to mind (creatively I would add) and that cause one to study. 

We also hope to explore some questions related to these issues, particularly the relation between academic and professional Research, at IASDR 2017 “Re|Research” hosted here next year.

Mike Zender
University of Cincinnati
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