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2006 July 5 Summary 2: Research -- Friends, These 1,475 words summarize issues on research. 1) Research definitions Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines research in a way that clarifies the term as living speakers use it: “1: careful or diligent search 2: studious inquiry or examination; especially: investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws 3: the collecting of information about a particular subject” (Merriam-Webster’s 1993: 1002; for more, see the Oxford English Dictionary). These definitions cover clinical, applied, and basic research; theoretical and practice-led research; qualitative, quantitative, descriptive, interpretive, logical, mathematical, empirical, positive, normative, hermeneutic, phenomenological, and philosophical research, as well as expressive research. What distinguishes research from other activities is what Mario Bunge (1999: 251) describes as the “methodical search for knowledge. Original research,” he continues, “tackles new problems or checks previous findings. Rigorous research is the mark of science, technology, and the ‘living’ branches of the humanities.” Synonyms for research include exploration, investigation, and inquiry. 2) Clearing up confusions Discussing practice-led research often generates two confusions, values confusion and category confusion. The first confuses value issues. Research is not “better” than painting, playing football, or feeding the poor. Research is different. An angry design student once asked me whether research is more important that feeding the hungry as though I could choose between solving a particular mathematical problem and ending world hunger. If I could choose, I would end hunger. I do not get to choose between these two. (Ending world hunger involves political and economic choices. See, f.ex., Fuller 1981 or Sachs 2005. We do not need to choose between two different social goods, research, and ending hunger. We must persuade our citizens and governments to end hunger for all humans. This takes the kind of research Sachs has been doing.) The second problem is category confusion that involves the frequent appeal to many ways of knowing. There ARE many ways to know, to learn, and to transmit information. While there are many ways to know and many kinds of knowledge, not all ways to know or learn constitute research. Theology and comparative religion entail research. Religious prophecy and divine revelation do not. This is why Dr. Wojtyla and Dr. Ratzinger found no conflict between church doctrine and evolution theory. Guilds transmit knowledge as a form of embodied information and modeling in the master-apprentice relationship. Apprenticeship is not research. There are hundreds of similar examples. Research is a range of systematic approaches to finding, learning, and knowing. There are others ways to find, know, and learn, and they are valuable. This workshop focused on research. Definitions help us to understand what we discuss so that we can deepen and improve our fields. 3) Other definitions At different points, participants posted valuable but limited definitions of research. These are useful. They simply have less covering power than the large-scale definition I use. I prefer to postulate a definition with the greatest covering power. If you prefer another definition, the way forward is not to say that my postulates are wrong. Present your own articulate definition instead. Definitions must be reasonable as well as articulate to be useful. Every workshop of this kind elicits definitions of research that are neither accurate nor useful. The common denominator among these is a tendency to label different kinds of non-research activities as research. In a private note, a doctoral candidate argued against my definition of research by referring to a diatribe against “colonizing research” and “positivism” in a book on “decolonizing methodologies.” The book argues that colonizing research includes “having your genealogy and identity (cell-lines) stolen, patented, copied; having the umbilical cord blood of aborted babies ‘farmed’; having your cultural institutions and their rituals patented either by a non-indigenous person or by another indigenous person” and so on (Smith 2002: 100-101). On this basis, the author argues that research is bad. While these are unethical practices, they are not research. That is rather like saying: “Dumping raw nuclear waste into the ocean is research. Therefore, research is bad.” Some of [these unethical] practices are based on knowledge derived from research, but they are not research practices. Instead, this resembles the relationship between metallurgy and killing people with swords. The same research that produces swords makes better plowshares. We choose how to use them. Our focus is research rather than other practices, good or bad. 4) Research goals One participant stated the goals of research as knowledge or understanding. That fits most definitions, broad or narrow. 5) Research and instrumental knowledge The goals of knowledge and understanding have many purposes. In contrast, we read an argument for instrumental knowledge that pointed to action research as an example of research where the goal of research is change. This requires a distinction the author did not make. The notion of instrumental knowledge fails to account for the diversity of research or change built on expanded knowledge and understanding. The year 1905 saw several contributions to basic research that had no practical application at all. The scientist who did the work said that he could imagine no foreseeable use or practical value in his work. The research expanded human knowledge by providing a better model of the physical forces at work in the universe. It had no other purpose. Over the following century, this supposedly useless research opened the way to much of the technology we use today, including the computer technology and Internet technology that you are using to read this summary in a workshop that enables us to meet in real time around the world. If all research were required to serve instrumental ends, we would live a world where 90% of all human beings worked in farming, fishing, and forestry, rising with the sun and retiring at dusk. Most of the products and services we use today began in some form of basic research. Many of the benefits we enjoy begin in non-instrumental experiments by people who want to see whether things can work in new and different ways. The demand for immediate application of instrumental knowledge is often associated with narrow political goals. Because the value of instrumental knowledge is always a political decision, history has seen many cases of instrumental research with destructive results. This is particularly common in dictatorships where those who fail to achieve serious research careers become “research politicians” through an ability to argue for instrumental knowledge without the deeper understanding that leads to improvements. Research works best when our goals are knowledge and understanding. This is even the case when our research has such instrumental goals as feeding the world or making tools work better. 6) Action research This clarifies the distinction between action research and action without research. The goal of research is knowledge and understanding. The goal of action research is informed action based on knowledge and understanding. If all action and all practice were informed by knowledge and understanding, we would not need action research, practice-led research, or any other kind of research. Consider, for example, the debate that occurred when practitioner physicians believed that their social standing required them to make hospital rounds and perform surgery in street clothes. The arguments against Pasteur, Lister, and Semmelweiss often posed action against academic theory. “We’re surgeons,” they argued, “Let’s get on with our practice! Invisible ‘microbes’ have nothing to do with medicine.” Kurt Lewin, Chris Argyris, Donald Schon, and the other founders of action research would have sided with Semmelweiss. Semmelweiss learned how to save patient lives by practicing the legitimate action research and sound science that medical practitioners opposed. Action based on knowledge and understanding is the goal of action research. Anyone can “change” things. The point of action research is to know and understand what we change, why we should change it, and how to change it effectively. The goal of action research is not “change” but “improvement.” We must decide what we mean by the term “improvement,” but one thing is certain: the word means something better and more desirable than what exists today. Change is something else. If the difference is not clear, just consider how dramatically George Bush changed the world. The goal of our workshop is knowledge and understanding for improvement rather than instrumental change established by uninformed political preferences. That is the difference between research and politics. Yours, Ken Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS Professor Dean Swinburne Design Swinburne University of Technology Melbourne, Australia References Bunge, Mario. 1999. The Dictionary of Philosophy. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books. Fuller, Buckminster. 1981. Critical Path. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 1993. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Tenth edition. Springfield, Massachusetts. Sachs, Jeffrey D. 2005. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. London: Penguin Press. Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 2002. Decolonizing Methodologies. Research and Indigenous Peoples. London and Dunedin: Zed Books and University of Otago Press.