Page 17 - DLIS401_METHODOLOGY_OF_RESEARCH_AND_STATISTICAL_TECHNIQUES

Methodology of Research and Statistical Techniques

Notes An empirical search for problems is considerably less expensive with some methods than
others. Exploratory experiments and surveys are certainly feasible, but pilot field studies and
searches through archives generally cost less, except perhaps for the researcher whose personal
expenditure of time and energy usually “fund” such studies. Moreover, discoveries arise in
different ways for different methods. Fieldworkers and nonreactive researchers are more likely
to make discoveries as a result of finding new data sources and examining new situations;
while survey researchers and experimentalists are more likely to make discoveries through
innovations in techniques of study design, sampling, or data analysis, which can generate
unexpected (serendipitous) findings by more precise tests of hypotheses.
Different research styles thus exert different constraints on formulating problems as open-
ended constraints in response to the immediate research situation for fieldwork and non-
reactive research or more programmed constraints for surveys and experiments. The multimethod
strategy provides the opportunity to overcome these methodological constraints upon problem
formulation and thereby gain the advantages of each approach while compensating for its
disadvantages.
Sieber (1973), for example, notes Stinchcombe’s (1964) reliance upon about six months of
fieldwork among the teachers and administrators in a high school to formulate the hypotheses
that guided Stinchcombe’s analysis of survey data from the same school. Sieber (1973) concludes
that “an optimal schedule for theoretical survey research would include a lengthy period of
fieldwork prior to the survey” (p. 1346). He further observes that although he could find in
the literature few other examples of this practice of deriving a survey’s guiding theory from
fieldwork, it may be quite common, since “Often, only passing acknowledgement is made of
prior personal familiarity with the situation, a familiarity that has produced rather definite
ideas for research (p. 1345). Sieber (1973) cites, for instance, Lipset’s (1964) autobiographical
account of how the childhood experience of his father’s membership in the International
Typographical Union, along with the classic works of Robert Michels and Alexis de Tocqueville,
influenced the research problem that Lipset and his colleagues formulated and tested in the
classic survey study, Union Democracy (1956). If, as Dewey suggested, the correct formulation
of research problems is crucial to their solution, then it is critical that no source of potentially
valid information—no matter how “unscientific” it may seem—be ignored.

Furthermore, Sieber (1973) demonstrates how despite “an historical antagonism between proponents
of qualitative fieldwork and survey research,” integration between these two research styles
has been achieved in numerous studies (p. 1335). He shows how fieldwork has been employed
to define the theoretical structure of problems later studied in surveys, to define and gain
greater knowledge of the problem relevant populations for surveys, and to reformulate problems
by aiding in the interpretation of surprising survey findings and statistical relationships between
variables. He likewise shows how surveys have been used to define and pinpoint relevant
cases for fieldwork, to verify and establish the generality of field observations, and to cast new
light on “hitherto inexplicable or misinterpreted” observations.

Generating Versus Verifying Theories
The issue of when and how to formulate research problems is closely related to another issue:
the relative importance of generating new theories versus the verification of existing theories.
Both building and testing theories empirically, are important research activities, but they serve
very different functions in scientific inquiry.
Since at least the 1960s, the appropriate balance between these two aspects of research has
provoked considerable controversy in the social sciences. For example, Glaser and Strauss,
writing about sociology in 1967, observe: “Verification is the keynote of current sociology.
Some three decades ago, it was felt that we had plenty of theories but few confirmations of

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