Social Research Today - Some Dilemmas and Distinctions1

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2003 2: 25Qualitative Social WorkMartyn Hammersley

Social Research Today : Some Dilemmas and Distinctions1

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Qualitative Social WorkVol. 2(1): 25-44 Copyright 2003Sage Publications London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi

1473-3250[200303]2:1;25-44;031277

Social Research Today

Some Dilemmas and Distinctions1

Martyn Hammersley

The Open University, UK

ABSTRACT

Difficult dilemmas face social researchers in the field of

social work and social policy, as elsewhere. These can include

tensions between the following: doing what a commitmentto research requires or serving policymakers; prioritizing

basic inquiry or promoting applied research; having a

primary concern with producing knowledge versus an

immediate and urgent commitment to practical improve-

ment in the world. These dilemmas are probably intrinsic to

the position of social research in modern societies, but they

are becoming more severe at the present time. It is argued

that, in dealing with them, we should be clear about the dis-

tinctive character of research, as against other related activi-ties; and must recognize its heterogeneity, identifying the

dimensions that differentiate its legitimate forms.

KEY WORDS:

applied inquiry

basic inquiry

policymaking

research

ARTICLE

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In this article I will begin by looking at some tensions that operate on socialresearchers today, especially those who work in professional fields like socialwork, social policy, and education. There is a sense in which these dilemmas

are perennial. However, for a variety of reasons they have become sharper inrecent times.They raise two closely related issues that need to be addressed: thequestion of what does and does not count as social research; and the issue ofwhat different typesof social research there are,how they are differentiated,andwhat is their proper relationship to one another.These issues have always beenimportant, but I believe that they are especially significant at present.

DILEMMAS

It is often said that we now live in a knowledge economy or a knowledgesociety (see Stehr, 1994); which means that research plays, or should play, acrucial role especially in guiding policy and practice in the public sector. Touse a currently popular phrase, policy and practice must be evidence-based,where evidencemeans research evidence.This has become a dominant themein the field of social work,as in other areas (Fortune and Proctor,2001;Proctor,2001; Sheldon, 2001; D. Smith, 2000; Stein et al., 1999; Trinder, 2000;Webb,2001) most recently symbolized by the establishment of the Social Care Insti-

tute of Excellence.Thus the external expectations of research are focused moreand more on the provision of information about what worksin terms of policyand practice. Only partly reflecting this,what might be called activist forms ofsocial inquiry are becoming increasingly influential;those in which research andpractice are to be brought closer together,or the two activities completely inte-grated. This may take the form of some notion of research-and-development(see for example Everitt, 1998; Gibbons et al., 1994; Rothman and Thomas,1994) and/or of emancipatory or participatory research of some kind (see

Beresford and Evans, 1999; Dullea and Mullender, 1999; Humphries andTruman, 1994; Powell, 2002;Truman et al., 1999).These trends exacerbate one or more of three tensions that are probably

intrinsic to the role of the researcher:

I. What Research Requires versus What Policymakers and Other Users of

Research Want

The first dilemma involves a tension between the requirements of good researchand serving policymakers and various other stakeholders. Of course, as

researchers, we very often want our research to be used, to have an impact onpolicy and practice. Indeed,we mayneedour research to be taken up by policy-makers or others if we are to be able to attract funds in the future and to keepour jobs. In the case of practitioner researchers in particular, there may be amoral imperative that inquiry feeds into practice. Yet, at the same time, there

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are features built into the very nature of research that may limit the extent towhich it can be applied to, or translated into, practice in any straightforwardway. Let me mention two aspects of this dilemma:

1 First, research often complexifies, so that what it presents are not clear-cutand simple findings,but conclusions that are necessarily fallible and to whicha range of qualifications must be attached. Of course, we might reasonablyargue that the complexity of research findings reflects the complexity of theworld, and also the fallibilistic and uncertain character of all knowledge.However, complex findings can be a problem for policymakers and otherexternal audiences, since they generally do not have much time to absorb

lengthy and detailed research reports.As a result,they will often expect researchfindings to be stated as a series of self-explanatory points. And, even for apractitioner researcher, complex findings may not be easy to translate directlyinto what is usable.There is a related problem too: one use that people oftenwant to make of research is to employ it in public justifications of policy orpractice.But for research findings to serve this function they must be immedi-ately intelligible to a broad audience, many of whom will know little aboutthe field concerned (though some of whom may think they already know alot). Now,the problem is that research findings cannot always be summarized

in ways that at the same time preserve their integrity but also make themeasily accessible to a wide audience. Researchers may well feel it necessary totry to reduce their research findings to two or three bold,and bald,points thatwill catch the attention of usersand the news media. Indeed,they may rightlyfeel that this is the only way in which their research will have an impact.Yetthis process of reduction may introduce significant distortion; and this isperhaps especially true in the case of qualitative research.2

2 A second aspect of the dilemma is caused by the fact that what users some-

times want are research findings that point in a particular policy direction.This may be because they need research to legitimate decisions already madeon other grounds. Alternatively, they may have begun to promote a particu-lar policy,be unable to change it easily,and need assistance in thinking throughproblems that have arisen with it. Either way, in this context, they probablydo not want research findings which suggest that their chosen policy direc-tion is fundamentally wrong,or that a different line might be a better option,especially not if this is one which has all sorts of obvious political or practicalproblems attached to it from their point of view. Such research would make

their task of sustaining support for the policy they are engaged on even moredifficult than it already is. But, of course, the outcome of any research studyis unpredictable, it may well end up providing what is seen as unwelcomenews or ammunition for critics;and therefore be regarded as of little,or evenof negative,value by many policymakers or practitioners. As a result, research

Hammersley Social Research Today 27



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findings may be ignored,or they may be played down,or perhaps rubbished.3

Indeed, sometimes even the practitioner researcher may produce findingswhose apparent implications he or she finds unpalatable or unusable.

Now,the two problems I have outlined concerning the usability of researchfindings that they are often complex and always unpredictable are of especialsignificance in a situation where researchers are not the only suppliers of infor-mation and ideas to practitioners, policymakers, the news media, and the publicat large;and especially where the border between research, on the one hand,andother sources of information and ideas, on the other, has become blurred. Inmodern societies, all sorts of agencies generate and disseminate information and

points of view, even when that is not their main function. These include com-mercial enterprises,political parties,pressure groups,trade unions,and professionalsocieties. Furthermore, most large organizations today have public relationsdepartments that are concerned with managing information about issues relevantto their interests. In addition, ad hoc inquiries are occasionally set up to investi-gate particular events or particular problems.There are also think tanksof variouskinds, which issue reports on policy-relevant issues.Very often, the informationproduced by all these organizations will be referred to as the product of research,but its character is very variable. In this context, what we mean by the term

research,and whether information coming from these various sources counts asresearch, become very important issues. And the least we can say is that thosewho work in some of these organizations have less scope for resistance to pro-ducing simplistic findings of a kind that suits powerful stakeholders than thosewho work in more conventional social research organizations or in universities;though changes in the latter may currently be reducing the difference.

Let me give a couple of concrete examples from the field in which Iwork, education. A few years ago the British Government commissioned the

management consultancy firm Hay/McBer to provide a framework describingeffective teaching in schools (Hay/McBer,2000). Now, there is a long, thoughrather inconclusive, tradition of academic research on teacher effectiveness (seeDunkin and Biddle, 1974; Chambers, 1992). And there is no shortage ofresearchers currently examining the nature of teaching and learning. Indeed,the Government has stimulated a whole programme of inquiry, funded byHEFCEWS (Higher Education Funding Councils of England, Wales, andScotland) and ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council), in this area.Buthere we have an organization, Hay/McBer,which is not in any straightforward

sense devoted to research, being commissioned to produce the kind of inputinto policy that researchers would normally expect to make. And there has beenconsiderable discussion about the simplisticnature of its findings,and the extentto which these were designed to meet the requirements of the Department forEducation and Employment (see Bassey, 2000; Bassey and Mortimore, 2001).Another example is the work of the Office for Standards in Education




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(OFSTED). The findings from OFSTED inspections are not research findingsin the usual sense of that term,but that is how they are often presented and/orinterpreted (see G. Smith,2000). And note that OFSTED reports usually get a

great deal more media attention than the findings of educational research studies.The label research still carries quite a lot of authority, so that it serves

as an important symbolic resource in the information marketplace.But I wonderif the value of that label is being eroded by other agencies claiming title to it,and perhaps even by the adaptations which researchers sometimes have to makein order to attract funding and/or to make their research appeal to policymakersand other potential users? It is important to recognize that users do not alwaysdistinguish clearly between research and pseudo-research.Furthermore,the latter

may sometimes suit them better than the knowledge researchers attempt toproduce, given the complex and unpredictable nature of this. There is a com-petitive situation here and there are pressures associated with it that may haveserious consequences both for the funding of social research and for the formthat research comes to take in the future.

II. Basic versus Applied Inquiry

The second dilemma I want to mention concerns the relationship between basicand applied research. What should be the balance between these two kinds of

work in any particular field,and how ought they to be distinguished and related?Later, I will raise some questions about this distinction, but for the moment Iwill rely on its familiarity.

The distinction between basic and applied inquiry overlaps partially withthat between university- and non-university-based social research; in the sensethat little basic work is done outside of universities,though quite a lot of appliedresearch is done within them.There has always been a status conflict here,alongboth dimensions. In terms of the values of the academy, applied research has

often been low status because it is marginal; in the literal sense that it addresseslay audiences at least as much as academic ones. Furthermore, from this pointof view, it is not pure research: it gives other values than truth considerableattention.By contrast,from the perspective of those who emphasize the practicalvalue of knowledge,applied research is often treated as superior to basic researchbecause it has more direct relevance to the current information needs of poli-cymakers and practitioners.

Over the years, the relative status of these two types of research has fluc-tuated,in the eyes of governments,professionals of various kinds,and the general

public. My impression is that in the past two decades or so there has been anincreasing push towards valuing the applied end of the spectrum above all else.Indeed, this trend has been hastened in Britain by the much more favourableattitude towards social research on the part of New Labour, as compared withthe last few Conservative governments. Furthermore, there have been someattempts to provide a rationalization for this shift, in terms of the nature of




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modern knowledge-based societies. Perhaps the most influential example isGibbons et al.s distinction between Mode 1 and Mode 2 research (Gibbons etal.,1994;Gibbons,2000).The former is the traditional academic model,whereas

Mode 2 research has the following characteristics:

1 It is focused on solving problems arising in particular practical contexts. The aim is

to generate a solution or a product, rather than simply to contribute to a body of

knowledge.

2 It takes place via teamwork, teams being non-hierarchicaland essentially transient.

3 It is transdisciplinary in orientation. The research teams are interdisciplinary; and,

while disciplinary knowledge is drawn on,what is most important is the knowledge,

understanding, and techniques accumulated through experience in doing Mode 2

research.4 Accountability in Mode 2 research is practical in character, involving users as well

as researchers. And market considerations can be crucial: its products are likely to

be judged at least in part by whether they are competitive and cost effective.

Gibbons et al.s book does not present an explicit argument in favour ofMode 2 research. Instead, it sets out to describe the central features of this kindof work,and to show its operation in different areas. But these authors advocateit implicitly, on the grounds that it is a growing trend across most fields ofinquiry.4

The problem both in the past and today, it seems to me, is the strongtendency to judge all social research in terms of a single model: as either basicor applied inquiry. Yet, neither form of inquiry can be abandoned withoutsignificant loss. And the result has often been a futile attempt to combine bothorientations, as in some kinds of action research.

III. Commitment to Research versus Commitment to Social Improvement or

ChangeThe third dilemma, like the previous one, is reflected not just in differencesamongresearchers, but can also arise within any individual researcher, or withinany team of researchers working on a particular project. Most researchers havea passionate commitment to their work. Indeed,in my experience doing researchwell is nearly impossible without such commitment. However, there is a dualconcern on the part of many researchers: with the pursuit of knowledge andwith the promotion of social improvement or change, of one sort or another.The first focus for passionate commitment is intrinsic to the task of research:

it concerns trying to discover the facts of the matter as against conventionalwisdom or official rhetoric, exploring diverse perspectives on an issue insteadof assuming that there is just one view, attempting to understand why some-thing happened in theway that it did,and so on. At the same time,most of usengage in social inquiry because we care deeply about various social problems,




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and we want our research to make a contribution to desirable change.We hopethat our findings will improve policy or practice;or at least move a problem upthe public agenda. Moreover, researchers sometimes work for organizations that

are themselves strongly committed to a particular policy area,and perhaps evento a particular policy position. Or they may be deeply involved withoccupational and interest groups in their field that have such commitments.What I am suggesting, then, is that there will often be a tension between aprimary concern with producing knowledge versus an immediate and urgentcommitment to bringing about some improvement in the world.

Now some researchers will deny that they face any such dilemma.Theymay argue that the dilemma does not arise where research is pursued systemati-

cally, or where it is related in a sound way to practice. However, I suggest thatdenial of this third dilemma is based on what we might call an Enlightenmentmyth: the assumption that proper pursuit of knowledge is always conducive,oreven equivalent, to pursuit of the good. The assumption is that the two kindsof passionate commitment I have identified on the part of researchers naturallygo together and serve one another. But this has always been open to challenge,most recently by postmodernists (Hammersley,2000b).Their attitude was sum-marized long ago by Friedrich Nietzsche:

For a philosopher to say, the good and the beautiful are one, is infamy; if hegoes on to add, also the true, one ought to thrash him. (Nietzsche cited in

Allen,1993: 41)

There are two sides to rejection of this Enlightenment idea. First, wecannot assume that our practical and political commitments,however laudable,will necessarily have a desirable impact on the pursuit of inquiry;any more thanwe can assume that because a researcher has objectionable beliefs or unaccept-

able political allegiances the findings produced will be false. Bias is an ever-present danger in all research;it is not restricted to those who have commitmentswe disagree with. No one who does research lacks attitudes towards the issuesbeing investigated, and usually they will not be without concerns about theconsequences of their work. And, however politically progressive these com-mitments are, they may still distort the process of inquiry.5

The second point is that it is a mistake to assume that producing know-ledge about an issue is always likely to lead to an improvement in the situation,that inquiry is always an essential requirement for significant improvement, or

that producing knowledge about an issue is always the best way to change things.While I do not want to deny the practical value of research, it is not automatic.Producing sound knowledge about an issue does not always lead to improve-ment or desirable change. Indeed, sometimes it can make the situation worse,at least temporarily (see Hammersley, 2002).




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Of course, in practical terms, researchers are often aware of this danger.An example is provided by a review of research on the educational achieve-ments of ethnic minority children (Gillborn and Gipps, 1996).The authors of

this review recognized that to emphasize the high and increasing level of relativeachievement of some categories of Asian pupil might obscure the problem ofrelatively low levels of achievement on the part of other ethnic minorities. Atthe same time, they were concerned to avoid the danger that reporting theunderachievement of African-Caribbean pupils, in aggregate terms, would betaken to imply that these pupils were in some sense less intelligent, less hard-working, etc. So, in order to avoid these twin dangers, they sought to empha-size the educational achievements of ethnic minority children, while yet

emphasizing that there is a continuing problem for some ethnic minority groupswithin the education system, but without using the term underachievement.The result was a rather complex message from which the media selected verydifferent themes, some emphasizing the relatively high level of achievement ofmany Asian pupils, others emphasizing the lower level of average educationalperformance of African-Caribbean pupils. Indeed, several media reports usedthe term underachievement, and some even employed the word underclass,which had not been mentioned in the Review (see Hammersley, 2003). DavidGillborn, one of the authors, commented on newspaper coverage of the report

that much of it struck a particularly alarmist and/or depressing note, castingBlack children as failures. And he suggested that several journalists took theopportunity to rehearse stereotypes of black family/community deficits(Gillborn, 1998: 6).

Both the efforts of the authors of this Review to control interpretationof its findings, and Gillborns comment on the newspaper coverage, indicate arecognition that publication of research findings does not always have goodeffects.Nevertheless,there continues to be an assumption that if research is done

and interpreted properly it will lead to desirable results; hence Gillborns criti-cism of journalists for drawing the wrong conclusions. The idea seems to bethat specific implications for policymaking or practice are automatically builtinto any set of factual research findings. But this is not the case.What practicalor political implications can be drawn from any set of factual research resultsalways depends on the value principles we bring to their interpretation, andhow we prioritize those principles (see Foster et al., 2000). Furthermore, thereis often disagreement about the priorities. Given this, in my view, researcherssimply have to accept that publication of research findings will not always

produce what they see as good effects, and that it will sometimes have whatthey judge to be bad consequences. It is perhaps fortunate, in light of this, thatpublishing research findings rarely hasmajor social consequences in itself.

So, my argument here is that if one is simultaneously committed to theproduction of sound knowledge about an issue and to bringing about some




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reasonably immediate improvement in a situation,these two concerns will some-times be in conflict. Furthermore, the first duty of a researcher, as researcher, isto do whatever is materially and ethically possible to produce sound,albeit relevant,

knowledge;and this may well mean not doing what would be the best thing todo from the point of view of improving the situation,and perhaps even occasion-ally doing something that could worsen it. Also required is toleration of interpre-tations of ones research that may not be what one would like, and which maybe negative from ones own value perspective.Very different from this is a positionthat some criticalresearchers and postmodernists adopt,which prioritizes the taskof serving the interests of a particular group,whether it be women,ethnic minori-ties, or the disabled.This, it seems to me, is simply to abandon any commitment

to research at all: to do politics under the disguise of engaging in inquiry (seeHammersley,2000b). Nevertheless, if instead we maintain a commitment to pro-ducing sound knowledge, we have to recognize that there is always likely to bea difficult and uncomfortable relationship between it and any concern withbringing about practical improvement or political change.

Putting the three dilemmas I have discussed together, we see how com-plicated and conflictual the task of social research can be. After all, there mayalso be tensions between what users want and what kind of research is rewardedin the organizations within which social researchers are employed, as well as

between one or both of these and researchers own value commitments. Giventhis complexity, researchers may often find themselves at odds with one anotheras well as with those who have a stake in their work;and indeed they may feelambivalent or uncertain about the proper nature of social research, and abouthow they ought to conduct themselves. What I want to suggest in the secondhalf of this article is that some assistance can be gained in approaching theseproblems by distinguishing research sharply from other activities, and drawingappropriate distinctions among different types of research,all of which have value.

TYPES OF SOCIAL INQUIRY

While diagnosing the problems faced by social researchers is not easy, it is easierthan providing remedies. And I should say straight away that I do not have anyremedies to offer. Indeed, I doubt there are any permanent solutions to thesedilemmas. Nevertheless,an essential requirement for our being able to deal withthem, and with others, is that we have a way of thinking about social researchwhich captures clearly how it differs from other forms of activity, and which

also distinguishes among the different forms that it can legitimately take. AndI believe that our current ways of thinking about these issues are unsatisfactoryin some key respects.They may have been adequate for most practical purposesin the past, but this is not true today. As a result of developments in philo-sophical and methodological thinking, of which postmodernism is only the




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latest wave, and as a result of changes in the wider society, older views aboutthe nature of research,and about the difference between basic and applied work,are increasingly open to question. In this context, then, I think we have to give

some attention to these matters.6

What I want to do then is to outline what seems to me to be the keydifference between research and other related activities, and to sketch the maindimensions in terms of which social research can vary (as regards its relation-ship to policymaking and practice). This is quite an ambitious task, but let mebegin in a relatively prosaic way with what at one time was called philosophicalanthropology;that is,with some truisms about human life. It can be noted thatresearch as an activity comes out of the everyday living of human beings; in

other words, there is an inquiry component in many of the activities in whichhumans engage. As pragmatist philosophers have long argued, notably Dewey,inquiry often arises when the flow of action is interrupted by a problem. Totake a mundane example, if my car will not start I may try to find out whatthe problem is,or get someone else to investigate it. In addition, there are somespecialized occupations where inquiry,albeit of a distinctive kind and geared toa specific purpose, is a crucial element. Examples include social work, inves-tigative journalism,and the work of police detectives and private investigators.7

Now, I want to distinguish between this kind of inquiry, which I will call

inquiry-subordinated-to-other-activities, and research. What is distinctiveabout research its most fundamental feature, I suggest is that it is a special-ized form of inquiry in which other goals are suspended by the person actingas researcher in order to pursue the production of knowledge. So, research isdefined by the fact that its exclusive immediate goal is the production of know-ledge of some kind, rather than inquiry being just one step in some largerpractical or political activity in which the inquirer is engaged. Of course, whatkind of knowledge is the intended product of research will often be framed by

practical concerns,but only in the sense of defining what knowledge it is worth-while to pursue.8

There are various possible reactions to this definition of research. Oneis that it is trivial, that it states the obvious. Yet it is at odds with the notionof action or intervention research, at least where this is conceptualized as thewhole process of devising solutions to practical problems, implementing them,monitoring outcomes, formulating better solutions, and so on, in a spiral ofimprovement. There is certainly an inquiry element involved here, but it isinquiry-subordinated-to-a-practical-activity. So, on this account, it is not

research. My definition of research is also at odds with some currently influ-ential ideas to the effect that research should be partisan. For example, it isnot uncommon for feminists to define the task of feminist research as to eman-cipate women, or for anti-racists to define their goal as to combat racism, orfor disability researchers to argue that the goal must be to serve the interests




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of the disabled.9But,on my argument here,research cannot have such immedi-ate goals; even though research may legitimately be pursued by individualresearchers in the hope that it will provide information that will aid progress

towards them. Now, the degree of disagreement here is difficult to determineprecisely. What some advocates of partisan research mean is that they believeresearch should be aimed at producing knowledge which is relevant or usefulto those engaged in a particular political struggle. And I accept that we maydo research for these reasons,and that we can choose particular issues to investi-gate on the basis of those reasons.My point is simply that,whatever the motive,the exclusive immediate goal of research should be to produce knowledge.10

Let me turn now to distinguishing different typesof research. It seems

clear that the old distinction between basic and applied work is not very helpful.For example, at the very least, the idea that the latter involvesapplyinggeneraltheories to particular cases does not fully capture its character. I am not sayingthat the distinction between basic and applied inquiry does not pick out some-thing important, it does. But it does not formulate the difference soundly.

The fundamental distinction I want to draw is between what I havereferred to elsewhere as scientific versus practical research. This could equallyhave been formulated as academic versus practical research. Indeed, that is theterminology I used in early drafts of another article (Hammersley, 2000a) and

it is the one I will use here.11The basis for this distinction concerns the close-ness of the relationship between research and policymaking or practice. Andthis has implications for the relative weight given to the two criteria that seemto be central to any assessment of research findings, and to how they are inter-preted. Those criteria are validity and relevance.12The criterion of relevancerecognizes that research ought always to be aimed at producing knowledgerelevant to human concerns. However it is a dimension. At one end of thespectrum,knowledge may be directly relevant, in the sense that it meets some

current need on the part of policymakers, practitioners, or the general public.(Of course, they may or may not acknowledge that need.) At the other far endof the spectrum is knowledge which does not relate to any practical problemthat most of us face in our individual or collective lives, but is nevertheless ofinterest.Take for example the frequently recycled idea that in the Inuit languagethere are many more words for snow than there are in English (a fact which,unfortunately, seems to be false: see Martin,1986;Pullum,1991). Furthermore,it is important to note that interest in a topic may not precede the research,but rather be stimulated by it. In other words, research may generate interest in

a topic by posing an intellectual problem that people had not thought of, orhad not previously had any interest in.

So, in part here, I am drawing a distinction between practical and intel-lectual problems. Of course, a great deal of academic research does relate topolicy or practical problems;but,on my definition, it is not specifically designed




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to feed into a current process of decision-making,or to shape public discussionat some particular point in time.Moreover,in my view,academic research reportsshould not be addressed, in the first instance, to policymakers or practitioners.

They should be addressed to fellow researchers (though, of course, some ofthese may also play policymaking or practitioner roles). The reason for thisrelates to the other criterion in terms of which research ought to be judged:validity. It seems to me that it should be a feature of academic research that agreater degree of emphasis is placed on validity. Moreover, a distinctive insti-tutional device is employed in academic communities to minimize the dangerof findings being accepted as true that are in fact false. This device is scrutinyby a research community guided by the principle of organized scepticism

(Merton, 1973: 25466, 26778), in which nothing can be assumed that isdoubted by a substantial portion of the relevant research community, membersof which may share relatively little in everyday experience or cultural back-ground. In other words, the first audience for academic research must be otherresearchers because assessment by them is the most effective way of checkingvalidity, in the sense of avoiding false positives.13

Now,I am not implying that practical research is not valid,or that practicalresearchers are not concerned with validity. A concern with validity is intrin-sic to all research; indeed it is essential to it, given that the immediate goal of

research is to produce knowledge. What is distinctive about practical researchin this respect is that it does not use the device of scrutiny by a research com-munity as a means of assessing validity;or it uses it to a much lesser extent thanacademic research. The research reports produced are aimed at a lay audiencenot primarily at fellow researchers.Of course,scrutiny by a research communityis not the only means of assessing validity, it is not even the only one used byacademic researchers. Validity is assessed by individual researchers and researchteams in the course of doing their work by checking alternative hypotheses

against evidence, etc. and the validity of practical research findings will beassessed in this way. However, it will also be judged by policymaking and prac-titioner communities; and those communities will not operate, and should notoperate, in a manner that approximates closely to the way in which researchcommunities are supposed to judge validity. They will assess research findingsto a large extent on the basis of practical assumptions and knowledge derivingfrom practical experience. Moreover, we should remember that some of thequestioning of assumptions that goes on within research communities oftenturns out to have been unnecessary; in the sense that what was questioned was

sound. And it may be that for practitioners even assumptions that are in somerespects unsound are still good enough as a basis for action on some occasions;or are better than available alternatives.The implication of this is that researchersmust address the issue of the validity of candidate knowledge claims partly in




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terms of the audience they are addressing,and this will differ between academicand practical research.14

Figure 1 summarizes the distinction between academic and practicalresearch.While this distinction does not match how social researchers currentlyoperate in an exact way, I believe that it should guide them in their work, andin their dealings with funders and users.

My final task in this article is to distinguish between different sub-typesof both academic and practical research. As regards academic research, I thinkthere is an important distinction to be drawn between research that is con-cerned with developing and testing theories theoretical research, in otherwords and research which is concerned with producing descriptions and expla-

nations of particular situations, events, etc., which might be called substantiveresearch. In practice, this distinction is often not observed, and researchersattempt to pursue both tasks simultaneously. However, as should be obvious,these tasks have rather different requirements.15


A c a d e m i c i n q u i r y P r a c t i c a l i n q u i r y

The immediate audience is fellow

researchers

The immediate audience is

practitioners and policymakers, aswell as others who have a practical

interest in the particular issue

The aim is to contribute to a

cumulating body of knowledge about

some aspect of the world. While lay

relevance is still a requirement, this

is interpreted in a relatively weak

sense, allowing the pursuit of issuesthat are neither of obvious immediate

practical value nor a matter of

curiosity for most lay people

The aim is to provide knowledge that

will be of immediate practical use

Findings are assessed primarily in

terms of validity; with a preference

for erring on the side of rejecting as

false what is true, rather than

accepting as true what is false

Findings are assessed in terms of

relevance and timeliness as well as

validity, with the latter being judged

on the basis of lay as well as

research-based knowledge

Figure 1 ACADEMIC VERSUS PRACTICAL INQUIRY



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Within practical research there are at least two important dimensions.The first is to do with whether the research is specifically directed towardsmeeting a felt need on the part of those who are to form the main audience

for it, or whether it is initiated by the researcher and perhaps even addresses aneed that users do not feel or do not feel strongly. So here, at the extreme, wecan distinguish between research designed to produce a specified type ofrequested information (perhaps detailed in a contract), and situations where theresearcher has considerable autonomy in what is to be produced;even thoughthe audience is still lay rather than academic. Indeed,in the latter case researchersmay play a proactive role in identifying and highlighting problems, for exampleby exploring clients attitudes towards the service they receive or the attitudes

of the wider public towards some controversial issue. This can be labelled as adistinction between pre-directed and autonomous practical research.Equally significant is the distinction between research that is designed to

serve the needs of some specific group of practitioners or of some particularorganization,and that which is addressed to a wider range of audiences. Direct-ing inquiry towards a small and clearly identified audience has the advantagethat it will normally be easier to determine what would and would not berelevant; and, as a result, what is produced may be more immediately usable.However, in every field there is usually an array of groups having some interest

in or involvement with its central issues. Often practical research will be con-cerned with feeding information to many or all of these audiences rather thanjust one. A strong justification can be framed for this type of work as further-ing democratic participation in decisions that are of public importance. Wemight label research designed to meet the needs for information of a particu-lar group dedicated practical research; and that which addresses a wider rangeof audiences democratic practical research.

These two distinctions within practical research cross-cut one another,

giving four ideal types;though instances of them will not occur with equal fre-quency, and what are involved here are dimensions rather than dichotomies.Figure 2 summarizes these possibilities.

So,it is important to recognize that research can take a variety of forms,each having somewhat different purposes and modes of operation. Moreover,these can all be of value, albeit in somewhat different terms. Above all, noneshould be treated as the model for all research. It is also necessary to distinguishresearch from inquiry-subordinated-to-other-activities. Again, while thedifference is crucial, it does not imply that research is the most important of all

activities; its significance varies according to context. Furthermore, I am notdenying that people who are researchers can and sometimes should play theroles of practitioner,policy advisor,public intellectual, advocate, etc.What I dodeny is that these other roles are the same as the role of researcher, that theycan be merged with it, or that researchers are the only people who can play




16/21

those other roles. Similarly, I am not saying that one must either be an academicresearcher or a practical researcher.What I amsaying is that these kinds of work

are different.They have different requirements and are to be judged in somewhatdifferent ways. So the same piece of research cannot be both academic andpractical; just as research cannot be fused with other types of activity.

CONCLUSION

In summary,I have outlined a number of dilemmas that are faced by researchers,and which have been heightened by recent trends both external to and within

the field of social inquiry. These involve conflicts between what policymakersand other users demand from research and what it can provide,between givingpriority to basic or applied research,and between researchersown commitmentto research and their practical or political concern with improving the world.I suggested that while there is no way of avoiding these dilemmas,dealing withthem can be facilitated by having a clear sense of what does and does not countas research, and of the different forms that research can legitimately take.

In the second half of the article I defined research as concerned exclus-ively with the immediate goal of producing knowledge, rather than with

pursuing other practical goals.However,I also distinguished between academicand practical research in terms of their distance from the information require-ments of other activities.Practical research is concerned with providing know-ledge that has direct relevance to those requirements. And in doing this itnecessarily places somewhat less emphasis on validity than does academic


Figure 2 TYPES OF PRACTICAL RESEARCH

Research pre-directed to

provide wanted

information

Researcher has

autonomous role in

producing practically

relevant information

Designed to meet the

needs of someparticular group ofpolicymakers orpractitioners

P r e - d i r e c t e d ,

d e d i c a t e d ,

p r a c t i c a l r e s e a r c h

A u t o n o m o u s ,

d e d i c a t e d ,


Aimed at a wider rangeof audiences with apractical interest in anissue

P r e - d i r e c t e d ,

d e m o c r a t i c ,


A u t o n o m o u s ,

d e m o c r a t i c ,




17/21

research, though the aim is still to produce findings that are more likely to betrue than information from any non-research source. Academic research placesgreater emphasis on validity than relevance, though the intellectual problems

it addresses must still have, at least some, human interest. Ultimately, validityis assessed in academic research through scrutiny by a research community.The findings of academic research ought only to be conveyed to a lay audienceonce that scrutiny has taken place, in the form of reviews of research findingswithin a particular field; rather than particular research reports being directedat lay audiences. However, the lower risk of accepting as true what is in factfalse,which academic research provides, is bought at considerable cost in termsof the lower direct usefulness of the research findings. There is a trade-off

here. Let me end by repeating that while these distinctions may seem scholas-tic, I think they are very important if we are to preserve the quality of researchin a context in which there are many forces operating that have the capacityto erode it; some of which I outlined at the beginning of the article. In myview these distinctions, or something like them, must be respected if socialresearch, of diverse kinds, is to be able to deal with the various dilemmas itfaces, and thereby to survive and flourish.

Notes

1 An earlier version of this article was given as an invited plenary lecture at a con-

ference on Researching the Voluntary Sector, organized by the National Council

for Voluntary Organisations in September 2001. Since my specialist field is edu-

cation, rather than social work, I have used educational examples in this article.

However, I believe the issues addressed are equally relevant for social work research.

For a discussion that emphasizes the similarities between the two fields see

Carpenter (2000).

2 For a discussion of these problems in the context of producing research reviews,

and in media presentation of research results,see Foster and Hammersley (1998) andHammersley (2003).

3 An example of the latter is David Blunketts response,as Secretary of State,to research

which suggested that eviction laws were being applied overzealously by some local

authorities: If this is what our money is going on, it is time for a review of the

funding of social research, BBC News web page for 20 November 1999

(http:/ /news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/529578.stm). His criticism of this study

was repeated in his speech to the ESRC: Blunkett (2000); see also Farrow (1999).

4 A related idea is interactive social science, seeScienceand PublicPolicy (2000) 27(3).

5 It is increasingly popular to argue that all research is inevitably biased,and that there-fore what is important is that the bias is of the right kind and is made explicit.Thus,

some argue for conscious partiality(Mies,1983:122) or openly ideological research

(Lather,1986).This is part of a broader attack on the concept of objectivity, though

some critics seek to redefine it (see Harding, 1992). For a powerful defence of the




18/21

concept of objectivity, showing that commitment to it is a precondition for any

form of inquiry, see Rescher (1997).

6 Some postmodernists, and others, would dismiss this as an exercise in the policing

of social research. And I agree that there is a sense in which this is what it is. But,personally, I would not want to live in a large-scale society without a police force,

despite all the problems to which policing gives rise. In any case, such critics them-

selves engage in intellectual policing, locking up a whole range of people in a

dungeon they label positivist.

7 Gathering and interpreting information are central to these occupations, but even

in other occupations inquiry is involved in evaluating practice.On evaluating practice

in social work, see Shaw (1996).

8 Practitioners of any kind may engage in research, as defined here, but it is import-

ant to distinguish between this and the various forms of inquiry-subordinated-to-other-activities in which they may also engage. For this argument in the context of

debates in education about teacher research, see Hammersley (1993).

9 See for example Humphries and Truman (1994), Oliver (1992), Broad (1999) and

Fawcett et al. (2000).

10 For discussion of different views about this issue in the context of evaluation, see

Shaw (1999: 6380).

11 The problem is that both formulations have unwelcome connotations, in opposite

directions. Restricting reference of the term scientific in this way, while desirable

in some respects, carries the danger of devaluing practical research. By contrast, theterm academichas now acquired a negative tone that sometimes suggests a complete

lack of practical relevance. Neither connotation is justified.

12 For a defence of the idea that these are the main criteria in terms of which research

findings should be assessed,see Hammersley (1998: 5877).

13 For an elaboration of this argument, see Hammersley (2002: 42).

14 The role of the anticipated audience here is to set what canbe taken for granted as

already known; it is important to emphasize that the researcher may always chal-

lenge some of what the audience is likely to take for granted.

15 For further discussion of types of academic research, see Foster et al. (1996: 324)

and Hammersley (2000a).

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Martyn Hammersley is professor of educational and social research at TheOpen University. His substantive research has mainly been in the field of edu-cation, but he has also done a considerable amount of work on social researchmethodology. His most recent book is Educational Research, Policymaking andPractice(Paul Chapman Publishing). Address:Faculty of Education and LanguageStudies,The Open University,Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA. [email:[email protected]]


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Social Research Today - Some Dilemmas and Distinctions1