General Considerations on Method in Research

Abstract

THIS statement on in research and inquiry was first developed to aid Ph. D. students in the field of Religion and Personality at The University of Chicago. Without some such aid as this, most of them tended to assume that method referred only to technical procedures. And yet, important as technical procedures are in any inquiry, they can not be regarded as exhausting The present statement is, then, an attempt to recapture a more balanced comprehension of method. It is not intended to depreciate the importance of technical procedures. Written for those planning to study in the area relating religion to studies of personality, this statement is not guaranteed to be equally relevant to other realms of inquiry in the psychological sciences. But at least in a general way, we believe it may be relevant; and we solicit comment as to how alterations in it could make it more useful beyond the special field of study that gave rise to it. Two principal temptations seem to confront the beginning researcher in this general field. According to the first, he begins by selecting some very large area of interest (e.g., the relation between psychotherapy and religious redemption), and then proceeds to read or count or measure at a great rate, in the mistaken conviction that things will become more specific and clear as he goes along. What he will find instead is that he will have, as Sam Goldwyn is reported to have put it, included nothing out. His project may be full of thought-starters, but none will have been pursued. The second temptation is for the researcher to concentrate so exclusively upon his technical procedures-even to the point of equating those with the entirety of his method-that the other necessary aspects of are not examined critically. When this is done, the mountain may labor and bring forth a mouse or, more probably, a specimen that defies any classification at all. At first glance, these two temptations appear to be almost opposite logically. Psychologically, however, they are similar, for both play into an illusory economy of mental effort. If this illusion can be resisted in the early stages of planning a study, then a genuine economy of effort can be reached later on at those points in the study when the consumption of time is greatest; i.e., when the data must be brought together to confront relevantly and significantly some specific problem, or to sharpen issues demanding further attention. With these temptations in the mental background, it becomes possible and desirable to state the several aspects of the total of a study. These, as enumerated below, tend to move from chronologically early to chronologically late, in the sense that explicit attention is given to one before another. But the chronological movement does not mean that the first is taken care of once the second has been entered upon. Each of these aspects becomes clarified as the next is entered upon. In addition, backtracking of all kinds, and steadily, is needed.