Overcoming Resistance to Research in a Job-Training Program

Abstract

Obtaining valid and reliable information about people's values and attitudes can be an arduous task even under the most optimal research conditions, but it is especially difficult when both the setting and the subject have been the focus of public scrutiny and criticism before research is undertaken by social scientists. A further complication is the growing opposition among some segments of the population particularly blacks, perhaps as a result of the black identity movement to being investigated especially by whites. This sentiment has even been voiced by some black social scientists, who contend that the prevalent methodological approaches utilized by white researchers in their investigation of blacks are inherently biased and are consequently unable to capture the reality of black life (Fraser, 1972). Thus it was with some trepidation that I, a white sociologist, embarked on an investigation of the meaning of work among chronically unemployed nonwhite persons in a job-training program (cf. Liebow, 1967). The study, for my dissertation, represented my first community research experience. As such it afforded me an opportunity to investigate sociological phenomena that had heretofore been presented and interpreted in abstract