Valuing methodological diversity

Why affirm the importance of methodological diversity now?

It is a particularly auspicious time to reaffirm the value of methodological diversity not simply for social work research but for all of social-behavioral inquiry. In discussions surrounding the management and delivery of programs in education, public health, and social service the language of accountability, performance measurement, and evidence-based policy and practice has become practically compulsory. In principle, such language is not objectionable. Who would claim that being accountable for one’s actions is a bad idea or that assessing performance is something to be avoided? Who would deny that evidence should not matter? After all, to substantiate one’s claims or actions on the basis of evidence is surely more dependable and defensible than appealing to habit, ideology, and personal preference. And, we routinely praise the accomplishments of inquirers of all sorts, from scientists to historians, health care practitioners to investigative journalists, when it is obvious that they have systematically pursued evidence, carefully weighed it, and judiciously used it to form a conclusion. Moreover, given our woefully impoverished public culture where it is permissible to state lies and then retract them by simply saying they were not fact-based statements, where scientific knowledge appears to have no place in public debate fueled almost solely by ideological positions, and where anti-intellectualism is celebrated, it is reasonable to argue that even greater attention needs to be paid to matters of accountability and credible evidence.

Yet, it is undeniable that accompanying these laudable objectives is a movement in both the scientific and political communities to place a premium on particular ways of knowing and particular kinds of evidence. The ways of knowing most favored are those associated with determining the effect and impact of interventions (whether in policy or practice) and with calculating and measuring the attainment of goals (whether in terms of individual or institutional performance). The evidence that is favored is most apparent in attempts to promote evidence hierarchies as well as in league tables, ranking schemes, and so on.

To be sure, there is internal criticism of the merits and means of establishing evidence of causal effect as well as evidence of institutional and individual performance, but there is little denying the fact that, at least in the present moment, these ways of knowing and kinds of evidence are regarded as authoritative for making decisions in policy and practice.

Thus, it seems that this is a particularly important time to remind ourselves that multiple ways of knowing and multiple methodologies are things that we cannot live without. And, to borrow a notion from Clifford Geertz (2000: 40), to reaffirm the belief that ‘a professional commitment to view human affairs analytically is not in opposition to a personal commitment to view them in terms of a particular moral perspective’ but rather is reflective of an inescapable tension between moral reaction and scientific observation.

Why do we need multiple methodological stances?

Multiple methodological stances, ways of knowing, and types of data are necessary for two reasons. The first is apparent in consideration of the nature of everyday life and how it is that we manage to navigate our way successfully through a world of people, objects, and events. A moment’s reflection will reveal that it is a rare day indeed in which we do not find ourselves having to experiment with something, analyze something, or count, measure, enumerate, or calculate. It is an equally unusual day where we would find ourselves not having to ‘read’ a situation, make sense of or interpret what we are seeing or hearing, or ‘grasp’ the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Likewise, it would be quite uncommon in everyday life that we would not employ, in some way, two kinds of language in which to express what we know – on the one hand, a language of exactness and precision (expressed in propositions, mathematical formulations, and logic), and, on the other hand, a language of nuance, depth, and subtlety (expressed in stories, case accounts, narratives, poems, and the like). In sum, we need multiple ways of knowing and multiple methodological capacities, so to speak, to successfully navigate everyday life. It is no different when we seek to scientifically investigate a phenomenon – we need to know what kinds, how many, why this is related to that and how strongly, how often, under what circumstances, and so on, as well as what does this mean, to whom, why, and so on.

A second reason why we need these multiple capacities, particularly as social-behavioral scientists, has to do with scientific humility. A cardinal epistemological (and moral) virtue of scientific investigation is humility with respect to one’s claims. This is reflected in the recognition that we never prove anything to be the case in our research, and that no single study ever yields findings that we should consider definitive. Mindful of epistemological fallibilism and the logic of critical multiplism (Shadish, 1993: 17), we recognize that ‘all scientific tactics are imperfect, because that is an inevitable feature of the finity or boundedness of human knowledge and action’ and, hence, there are different designs, analyses, and questions to ask – all of which need to be carefully considered before drawing conclusions about a phenomenon.

What is required of us to work with multiple methodological stances?

Of course recognizing that we need these multiple methodological capacities to make sense of and navigate human affairs is only half the battle, so to speak. The most difficult task we face is knowing how and when to employ those capacities – that is, knowing when to examine/when to embrace, when to calculate/when to contemplate, when to intervene/when to listen and learn, when to watch/when to relate, when to empathize/when to analyze, and so on. To learn how to do this well is not a matter of mastering methods and procedures or of matching research questions to methods but of acquiring practical wisdom and recognizing the difference between searching for optimal versus satisficing solutions to our problems of making sense of the world. As Feuer (2006: 39) explains, we need to adjust the theory of action underlying our efforts to research and reform practices in education and the human services ‘from one with implicit tones of optimization and objective rationality toward one that assumes conditions of complexity coupled with cognitive limits of decision making.’

Why should we value methodological diversity?

Pluralism with respect to values (Berlin, 1998) and epistemologies (Bernstein, 1992) means there is no escaping the existential realty of finding ourselves immersed in a field of different epistemological traditions, philosophical orientations, theoretical frameworks, standpoints, perspectives and the like. It also means being suspicious of all attempts at a grand synthesis or unification of the multiplicity of perspectives as well as any effort to define one perspective as infinitely superior in some respect. Instead, pluralism is about finding ways to orchestrate, juxtapose, and place into a coherent, engaging conversation multiple views. Writing about the social science wars of the mid 1990s, Topper (2005: 212), for example, argued for embracing a ‘more capacious and disorderly conception of the scientific enterprise, while striving to clarify the scope and limits of [our] own theoretical frameworks.’ He added that alongside voices preoccupied ‘with the familiar plotting and enactment of dichotomous positions, one can detect views and voices that are distinctly less invested in preserving binary positions … and ‘display an ongoing commitment to forms of critical pluralism that sustain communication across theoretical and methodological boundaries, without insisting that such communication presupposes something like a single, unified “disciplinary matrix”’ (pp. 215–216).

Pluralism is one response to the heterogeneity of values and ways of knowing that characterize everyday life and the practices of teaching, learning, managing, leading, providing health and human services, and the like, in which we find ourselves embedded. It stands in opposition to the pursuit of objectivism (Bernstein, 1983), a monist response holding that there is only one set of values or one way of knowing that is correct, true, valid; all others are incorrect, false, invalid. It also opposes a relativist response that holds my values or way of knowing are mine, yours are yours, and neither of us can claim to be right.

A pluralist argues that variety in values and ways of knowing is not simply inevitable but that a society in which variety of views is held and those holding differing perspectives are not simply tolerant of one another but seek to engage one another is superior to a society in which one opinion is binding on everyone. But a pluralist response is of value only if it is a particular kind of pluralism. Richard Bernstein (1992) has been particularly helpful in thinking about this. He identifies several types of unacceptable pluralism: Fragmenting pluralism in which each small community of like-minded folks is self-contained and does not even experience the need to talk with others outside their community. Flabby pluralism ‘where our borrowings from different orientations are little more than glib superficial poaching’ (p. 335). Polemical pluralism where there is no ‘genuine willingness to listen and learn from others’ but rather pluralism becomes ‘an ideological weapon to advance one’s own orientation’ (pp. 335–336). Defensive pluralism – ‘a form of tokenism, where we pay lip service to others “doing their own thing” but are already convinced that there is nothing important to be learned from them’ (p. 336). A more generative, morally defensible position representing what is best in the pragmatic tradition is engaged fallibilistic pluralism that:

Places new responsibilities upon each of us. For it means taking our own fallibility seriously – resolving that however much we are committed to our styles of thinking, we are willing to listen to others without denying or suppressing the otherness of the other. It means being vigilant against the dual temptations of simply dismissing what others are saying by falling back on one of those standard defensive ploys where we condemn it as obscure, wooly, or trivial, or thinking we can always easily translate what is alien into our own entrenched vocabularies. (p. 336)

This particular pluralistic ethos need not mean that we reach unanimous agreement, but it does mean a dialogic response to conflict and difference, a genuine effort to grasp the other’s position not as adversary but as conversational partner who responds with virtues of responsiveness and responsibility. Applied to the effort to recognize the scientific value of multiple ways of understanding the phenomenon of social work this is no small task, but efforts such as Professors Thyer and Shaw have undertaken are certainly a step in the right direction.