Critical Action Research

Critical Action Research

The critical action research process turns the traditional power hierarchy between “professional” researchers and research “subjects” upside down and invokes a commitment to break down the dominance and privilege of researchers to produce relevant research that is able to be sensitive to the complexities of contextual and relational reality.

In this type of research, the stakeholders of the research work with the researchers to define the problem and set the research agenda, find new ways of seeing the situation, and work toward solutions. The process empowers both the researchers and the research participants because the research effort allows discovery and exploration of power differentials in the research relationship as well as in the community under study.

This entry describes action research, critical theory, and their integration to form critical action research. It then presents a number of examples of such research and reviews some of the challenges in using this approach.

 

Critical Theory

Critical theory looks at, exposes, and questions hegemony— traditional power assumptions held about relationships, groups, communities, societies, and organizations—to promote social change. Combined with action research, critical theory questions the assumed power that researchers typically hold over the people they typically research.

Critical action research takes the concept of knowledge- as-power, and equalizes the generation of, access to, and use of that knowledge. Critical action research is an ethical choice that gives voice to and shares power with, previously marginalized and muted people.

Critical action researchers do this by questioning the social implications and moral issues of action and by seeking shared understanding of the social action.

Critical action research seeks to empower people by involving them in the study of the social processes that have constructed their submissive positions in society.

The aim of critical action research is twofold: (1) improved understanding of a social phenomenon and (2) social transformation at a community or organizational level resulting from reflexivity and self-reflection about the hegemony in the research relationship and in the community or organization.

Critical action research follows a collaborative cycle between participants and researchers of reflecting, planning, acting, observing, reflecting, replanning, and so on. Elizabeth DePoy and colleagues in 1999 suggested a model of critical action research that includes the following:

1. Recognizing and articulating a social problem

2. Convening a steering committee from among all stakeholder groups

3. Identifying the scope of the research and the type of social change desired

4. Selecting a collaborative research team

5. Training laid researchers on the research team in research methods

6. Designing the study, including research questions and methods

7. Conducting the study and analysis

8. Reporting the findings in accessible formats to all stakeholder groups

9. Acting on the findings by planning and following through with social change

10. Identifying a steering committee for follow-up inquiry

 

Critical action research is an ethical choice that exposes and seeks to change existing power structures and inequalities within the community under study. It does so within a framework of smoothing out inequalities within the research structure. Both of these processes, at the research level and at the community level, are fraught with the challenges expected when rebelling against the status quo. This research-asactivism process leads to social change, but it is neither smooth nor easy. It is, however, worthwhile.

Content Analysis

Content Analysis

Content analysis is the intellectual process of categorizing qualitative textual data into clusters of similar entities, or conceptual categories, to identify consistent patterns and relationships between variables or themes. Qualitative content analysis is sometimes referred to as latent content analysis.

Content analysis is a method that is independent of theoretical perspective or framework (e.g., grounded theory, phenomenology) but has its beginnings as a quantitative method.

Where quantitative content analysis is helpful in answering “what” questions, qualitative content analysis can be helpful in answering “why” questions and analyzing perceptions.

In qualitative research, content analysis is interpretive, involving close reading of text. Qualitative researchers using a content analytic approach recognize that text is open to subjective interpretation, reflects multiple meanings, and is context dependent (e.g., part of a larger discourse).

When analyzing qualitative data such as interview transcripts, analyses across the whole set of data typically produce clusters or codes that translate into “themes.” For example, an interview study that explores the experience of new parenthood may produce interview transcripts that are analyzed for content related to themes ranging from stress to social isolation to joy.

Textual data include non-written text, such as photographic data, equally open to content analysis. In this case, the researcher may identify content as straightforwardly as identifying objects evident in photographs or may conduct more subtle analyses of symbolic communications that can be unconsciously discerned from a physical space.

Content analysis could be applied to the official reports and policies of an organization; such an analysis may identify the stated priorities of that organization as well as reveal implicit political perspectives.

The results of a content analysis may reveal recurrent instances of “items” or themes, or they may reveal broader discourses. The “categories” or clusters of data identified may represent discrete instances (i.e., something is apparent or not), or they may be represented as degrees of attributes, such as direction and intensity, or qualities (i.e., a quality such as joy is evident to some degree rather than simply present or absent).

In quantitative work, content analysis is applied in a deductive manner, producing frequencies of preselected categories or values associated with particular variables. A qualitative approach to content analysis, however, is typically inductive, beginning with deep close reading of text and attempting to uncover the less obvious contextual or latent content therein.

Validity and reliability are key to robust content analysis. In qualitative terms, the researcher doing a qualitative content analysis seeks trustworthiness and credibility by conducting iterative analyses, seeking negative or contradictory examples, seeking confirmatory data through methodological triangulation, and providing supporting examples for conclusions drawn.

Comparative Research

Comparative Research

Comparative research is a broad term that refers to the evaluation of the similarities, differences, and associations between entities. Entities may be based on many lines such as statements from an interview or individual, symbols, case studies, social groups, geographical or political configurations, and cross-national comparisons.

Comparative research is used within most qualitative approaches, such as comparisons by core emic categories in ethnographic studies, within-case comparisons in phenomenology, case study   comparisons, comparative politics, and examination of contrasts in narrative and discourse analysis.

 

The Goal of Comparative Research

The underlying goal of comparative research is to search for similarity and variation between the entities that are the object of comparison.

The ontology of patterns or categories is assumed to be universal and independent of time and space. In other words, the comparison should be broad enough to allow researchers to compare at a “higher level” of abstraction.

Following Max Weber’s comparative sociology, for example, the search for variance places more emphasis on context and difference so as to understand specificities. Comparisons not only uncover differences between social entities but also reveal unique aspects of a particular entity that would be virtually impossible to detect otherwise.

A well-known type of comparative analysis used in qualitative research is Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss’s technique of “constant comparative analysis” derived from the sociological theory of symbolic interactionism.

The central task is to compare one piece of data with all others to compare similarities and differences. Data may be in the form of an interview, a statement, a theme, or another specified unit.

Another common comparative application within qualitative research is that of cross-national comparisons. A long-standing practice in ethnography is the use of “controlled comparison” of different societies stemming from the work of Frederick Eggan during the early 1950s.

Comparative research poses several key methodological problems that continue to frustrate, captivate, and stimulate researchers. These are the selection of cases (including the unit, level, and scale of analysis), construct equivalence, case versus characteristic orientation, and the debate regarding causality.

 

Comparative Analysis

Comparative Analysis

Comparison is at the heart of most social sciences research. Comparison can take place between different entities, such as individuals, interviews, statements, settings, themes, groups, and cases, or at different points in time. These entities or time periods are then analyzed to isolate prominent similarities and differences, a process that is described by the term comparative analysis.

It involves taking one entity or piece of data, such as a statement, an interview, or a theme, and comparing it with others to identify similarities or differences.

Comparative analysis is also a primary task within case study research. Case studies are often compiled with the knowledge that comparisons will be made with the description of a particular case. In some instances, researchers will compare a particular case with that of a hypothetical reference group or frame of reference to highlight differences.

This focus on comparison is at odds with the approach of “thick description” by Clifford Geertz, where the detailed description of the case itself, as opposed to the comparison, is the focus of the study. A comparative qualitative approach to the examination of cases is often via the examination of a few cases in a very intensive manner.

 

Codes and Coding

Codes and Coding

Codes and coding are integral to the process of data analysis. Codes refer to concepts and their identification through explicit criteria.

In qualitative research, discussions of coding most often center on the inductive process of searching for concepts, ideas, themes, and categories that help the researcher to organize and interpret data.

 

Coding as Process

The derivation of codes and the coding process tend to differ in quantitative and qualitative research. In quantitative research, codes are commonly created prior to data collection.

Concepts and hypotheses are most often developed in advance, and categories and their codes are derived deductively from theory or borrowed from the extant literature.

Coding consists of identifying potentially interesting events, features, phrases, behaviors, or stages of a process and distinguishing them with labels.

CASE STUDY

CASE STUDY

A case study is a research approach in which one or a few instances of a phenomenon are studied in depth. Case studies were the predominant research approach at the beginning of modern social science. For example, this is reflected in the work of the Austrian born anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and the Chicago School of sociology, both of which embraced case study research.

Case studies focus on one or a few instances, phenomena, or units of analysis, but they are not restricted to one observation and boundaries are not clear.

 

 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Case Studies

The main difference between case studies and experiments is that in experiments cases are created by the researcher and factors of influence can be controlled.

It is broadly accepted that case studies have been the major source of theoretical innovation.

Case studies are often concerned with pinning down the specific mechanisms and pathways between causes and effects rather than revealing the average strength of a factor that causes an effect.

Even positivist methodologists accept that case studies have a strong comparative advantage with respect to the “depth” of the analysis, where depth can be understood as empirical completeness and natural wholeness or as conceptual richness and theoretical consistency.

Case studies have advantages with respect to construct and internal validity. The argument for better construct validity is based on the fact that case studies can use more and more diverse indicators for representing a theoretical concept and for securing the internal validity of causal inferences and/or theoretical interpretations for these cases.

 

Three Different Views on Case Studies are naturalism, positivism, and constructivism.

 

Choosing Cases

There are several appropriate designs for case studies (according to Yin -1994 and Winston- 1997) such as exploratory, explanatory, and descriptive.

Exploratory Case Studies:  When conducting exploratory case studies, fieldwork and data collection may be undertaken before defining a research question. This type of study may be seen as a prelude to a large social scientific study. The study must have some type of organizational framework that has been designed prior to beginning the research.

Explanatory Case Studies:  Explanatory case studies are useful when conducting causal studies. Particularly in complex studies of organizations or communities, one might desire to employ multivariate cases to examine a plurality of influences. This might be accomplished using a pattern-matching technique suggested by Yin and Moore (1988).

Descriptive Case Studies:  Descriptive case explorations require that the investigator present a descriptive theory, which establishes the overall framework for the investigator to follow throughout the study. This approach is the formation and identification of a viable theoretical orientation before enunciating research questions.

Yin (1994, p. 20), in creating formal designs for case-study investigations recommends five component elements:

1-       Study questions

2-       Study propositions (if any are being used) or theoretical framework

3-       Identification of the unit(s) of analysis

4-       The logical linking of the data to the propositions (or theory)

5-       The criteria for interpreting the findings

 

 

 

Applies research

Applied research

Applied qualitative research is concerned, first and foremost, with the usefulness and application of knowledge. Its primary focus is on the production of knowledge that is practical and has immediate application to pressing problems of concern to society at large or to specific public or private research clients.

 

 

Applied Versus Basic Research

Since the inception of applied research, there has been much conversation, across various fields of social science, about the distinctions, relative strengths, and even relative value of applied versus basic research. These distinctions were historically presented in stark contrast, with basic research being portrayed as pure, highly controlled, bias-free research often done in the lab for the sake of knowledge alone and unchallenged by practical, real social problems.

Applied research was described as field based and designed to solve problems, often at the behest of nonscientists; thus, it was viewed as nonacademic, less controlled, less rigorous, potentially biased, and atheoretical in its orientation to outcomes rather than  concepts.

Many writers, in line with the writings of Lewin, argue against these stark distinctions, viewing the differences between basic and applied social science research as more nuanced and on a continuum rather than dichotomous. Russell Ackoff suggested that it is the researchers’ intentions and the audience’s use of research data that distinguish the two. Willy Lens showed how B. F. Skinner’s basic research had obvious applications; whereas Sigmund Freud’s applied work had a clear theoretical basis and outcome.

 

Types and Uses of Applied Research are action research, participant research.

Applied research spans many substantive areas of interdisciplinary research and human services to address a wide range of persistent social problems as well as theoretical questions. Because applied research is so relevant to the general public, it is often used to inform governmental policy and legislation,

Applied research is also employed by community based researchers, such as community psychologists, for community analysis and development, program evaluation and/or planning, prevention research (e.g., substance abuse prevention, violence prevention), and the empowerment of vulnerable populations.

 

:Applied Research Methods 

   Formulating the problem

 Constructing the model

    Testing the model

  Deriving a solution from the model

  Testing and controlling the solution

 Implementing the solution

 

AGENCY

AGENCY

Human agency is very similar to the notion of free will in that agency may be understood as the capacity to exercise creative control over individual-level thoughts and actions.

In the ideals of Western democracy, there is a widespread assumption that humans are imbued with free will and, as such, routinely exercise agency within the domain of their personal choices as well as in the social and political realm.

Timothy McGettigan argued that, despite the inescapable impact of societal influences on human psychosocial development, it remains possible to locate agency within the coercive context of social reality. McGettigan argued that actors demonstrate a capacity for agency when, on perceiving evidence that is in discord with their understanding of reality, they refashion their comprehension of reality to facilitate an understanding of that discordant evidence.

The existence of a capacity for redefining reality establishes that individuals who are situated within rigid contexts of social control can emancipate themselves sufficiently to think and act in a self-determined manner, that is, to exercise agency.

Advocacy research

Advocacy research

Advocacy research is intended to assist in advocacy, that is, efforts to assemble and use information and resources to bring about improvements in people’s lives.

Advocacy groups typically address concerns about public health, social welfare, and public safety. Their size and scope of interest can range from a neighborhood group protesting the closure of a local playground to multinational coalitions organized to fight for the rights of the disabled.

Given the relative scarcity of finances and expertise, few advocacy groups engage in empirical research, instead getting their information through informal interviews, documents and records, legal action, and previous research.

 The distinction between information gathering and research can be blurry, but the latter refers to the deployment of systematic methods using extant research designs and modes of data collection and analysis.

 

Stakeholders and the Role of Research in Advocacy:

 The stakeholders in advocacy include three interrelated groups or entities:

1: those being advocated for

2: those doing the advocating

3: those being advocated against.

 

Qualitative Methods in Advocacy Research:

 Although the goals of advocacy research maybe furthered using a variety of methods, some qualitative approaches are a better fit than are others. With ethnography, the researcher observes organizations and/or communities to understand the behaviors, interactions, and tacit understandings that shed light on the problem being advocated against (or the goal being advocated for) as well as potential solutions.

Among types of qualitative data collection, focus groups and individual interviews provide valuable opportunities for individuals to be heard in their own words, and observation and field notes capture events in vivo. Documents, whether official records or personal diaries and journals, are also a valuable data resource, as are photographs and video recordings. Recent innovations, such as photovoice techniques and use of online web-based technologies, introduce new and often more accessible means of qualitative data collection.

 

 

Action research

Action Research

Action research is a flexible research methodology uniquely suited to supporting change. It integrates social research with exploratory action to promote development. The outcomes of action research are both practical and theoretical.

Action research is often used in fields such as education, social and health services, and community development, where there is a long history of difficulties in successfully transferring research knowledge into changes in practice.

Collaborative action research can also break down the separation between policymakers and practitioners, giving the former richer insights into practice and giving the latter an active role in policy development as well as its implementation.

The first person to use the term action research was probably Kurt Lewin, a psychologist who went to the United States from Germany during the 1940s and worked with immigrant groups to promote their better integration into U.S. society.

Lewin believed that human behavior was always a function of the situation at the time it occurred; therefore, he did not believe it was ever possible to make generalizations about human behavior that would apply to all contexts. Action research generates knowledge about the interrelationship between human behavior and sociocultural situations rather than generalizable truths, and it is important that it be reported in a form that includes narrative accounts and rich description as well as analysis and interpretation so that readers can make comparisons with their own situations.

In the United States, as well as in many other countries, there has been a blurring of the boundaries between action research and practitioner research in which the purpose of inquiry is to deepen understanding and enrich teacher learning rather than to bring about intentional change.

Action research is always grounded in the values and culture of the participant researchers who engage in it and, as a result, is a fluid methodology that adapts to fit different social contexts. For example, in developing countries where there is huge social inequality perhaps deriving from a colonial past, or in developed countries among groups concerned with issues of race or gender.

An important feature of action research is that it is carried out by a partnership of participants who are “insiders” to the situation under research and external facilitators/researchers/consultants.

One of the most important contributions of action research as a methodology for building understanding of change and development is its unique access to insider knowledge.