Originally published in INSIDE HIGHER ED, Oct. 30, 2009
For social scientists starting their careers, creating research models that
work is crucial. A new book suggests that they may be unaware of problems they
face in part because scholars don't share stories of what didn't work on their
projects, and how to deal with particular challenges. Research Confidential:
Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have has
just been published by the University of Michigan Press. The
essays in the collection are all by younger scholars, including the volume's
editor, Eszter Hargittai, an associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern University, a fellow at the Berman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and a career advice columnist for Inside Higher Ed. Hargittai responded to questions about the book.
Q: I was struck by the part of your subtitle where you say "pretend
they never have." Why do you think social scientists don't recognize or
hide from problems with their research methods?
A: This title refers less to what social scientists recognize and
more to what shows up in the final write-up of their projects. When one reads
journal articles, the methodological sections tend to make the projects sound
rather straight-forward. In books, details about methods are usually relegated
to an appendix, at best, and do not tell the reader the reality of data
collection. Instead, they are pretty, cleaned-up versions of what happened. For
example, they will include the number of final interviews the researcher
conducted, but they won't include details about how many attempts it took to
get a person to come to an interview.