Methodological Dilemmas Research Articles

Introduction to research on immigrant and ethnic minority families in Europe

1.IntroductionResearch on immigrants and ethnic minorities has two broad objectives. First, the study of people who move from one societal context to another offers a unique opportunity to gain a better understanding of how various factors influence individuals' choices and actions. The research on immigrants and their descendants thus contributes to wider social science discussions on the role of structure and human agency and economy and culture in human action and social phenomena (Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1984). These discussions are closely related to the classical methodological dilemmas of social science research, the roots of which extend back to ancient Greek philosophy. Should social scientists explain social phenomena from 'bottom up' or from 'top down' (individualism versus holism) and should they look for universalistic (science-based) explanations or (context-) specific accounts (Bhaskar 1978; Hollis 1994; Von Wright 1971)?Second, research on immigrants and ethnic minorities is very much driven by the desire and need to improve our understanding of the factors that promote or hinder successful integration of immigrants and their descendants (Kulu and Gonzalez-Ferrer 2014). While conventional research has considered assimilation of immigrants to be the expected outcome, recent literature has emphasised the importance of immigrant integration and cultural diversity (Alba and Nee 1997; Berry 1992; Gordon 1964; Portes and Zhou 1993). It is normally desired that immigrants and ethnic minorities achieve a high level of structural assimilation or integration, i.e., they should have the same educational, employment, and housing opportunities and outcomes as natives, but they may maintain their cultural distinctiveness, e.g., practise their own religion or speak their own language at home. The recent literature on transnationalism has challenged the classical debate of assimilation/integration versus separation/marginalisation, arguing that immigrants and their descendants may wish to live 'in-between' old and new home countries and that this practice should be supported (Glick Schiller 2010; Vertovec 2004). However, it remains far from clear whether living in 'transnational space' is a new form of successful integration in our globalised world, or rather reflects marginalisation (or incomplete integration) in a world where nation states are still important.There is a large literature investigating the employment and educational patterns of immigrants and their descendants (Adsera and Chiswick 2007; Kogan 2007; Rebhun 2010; Rendall et al. 2010). Decent educational and employment prospects are seen as critical for the successful integration of immigrants and their descendants and are assumed to significantly shape other domains of their lives. Research on family dynamics among immigrants and their descendants is equally important in this context. Family patterns of immigrants and ethnic minorities provide another perspective on their integration or the lack of it; family lives are also interwoven with both structural and cultural dimensions of the integration process. Further, research has argued that the prevalence of inter-ethnic marriages is the ultimate litmus test of immigrant integration in a society (Coleman 1994; Feng et al. 2012; Kalmijn 1998). The spread of mixed marriages can be seen as a signal that there are no (more) borders between groups that cannot be crossed in society, leaving a free choice in the marriage market for both majority and ethnic minority populations. Besides the choice of partner, the timing and type of union are also important indicators of changing social norms and behaviour among immigrants. These changes often depend on the time spent in the host country, or only become visible in the following generations.The aim of this paper is to provide an introduction to the special collection of Demographic Research on partnership dynamics among immigrants and their descendants in five selected European countries. …

Emotional landscapes; discomfort in the field

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore a researcher’s emotions in the field. It argues that a researcher’s emotional responses can lead to insights into certain aspects of participants’ emotional and social worlds, while simultaneously obscuring certain lines of inquiry and limiting data collection. On this basis, the author calls for researchers to maintain a high level of awareness and reflexivity while working with strong emotions in the field. This, the author argues, allows a researcher to remain open to new understandings and address any limitations skilfully and transparently.Design/methodology/approach– Drawing on feminist theory and emerging scholarship pertaining to fieldwork and emotions, this paper examines the methodological dilemmas the author faced in relation to the own subjectivity while carrying out field-work at radical ecovillage in the USA. It analyses sections of the reflexive diary and explores the insights the author gained by remaining aware and reflexive while in the field.Findings– The author demonstrates how feelings of unease, alienation and entrapment prompted to explore new lines of inquiry and, in turn, consider certain emotion rules and ideologies present in the research setting. The author also speculates about the ways such feelings impacted the data collection by obscuring certain phenomena in the field.Research limitations/implications– The author makes a number of practical suggestions about how researchers can work skilfully with emotions in the field. In addition, the author proposes that by remaining mindful of one’s emotional responses valuable lines of questioning and themes may emerge for consideration.Originality/value– This paper contributes to emerging scholarship on the importance of examining a researcher’s experiences and reactions to a research setting in conjunction with other data. It offers a practical example of how this approach can elicit insight into the lives of participants.

The Concept of Technological Entrepreneurship: The Example of Business Implementation

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Interviewing with or without the partner present?--an underexposed dilemma between ethics and methodology in nursing research.

To discuss ethical and methodological challenges related to in-depth interviews with patients and partners when interviewed together or separately. Increased interest in exploring illness phenomena from both patients' and partners' perspectives has emerged. The decision about how to collect data is challenging. Patients and partners can be interviewed separately or together; in both scenarios researchers face complex questions of methodology and ethics. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on individual or joint interviewing and the effect of absence/presence of the partner on data collection. Discussion paper that draws on data from three phenomenological studies. Referring to three cases from our phenomenological studies, we discuss the different types of ethical and methodological dilemmas faced when undertaking joint and separate interviews with couples. Furthermore, we discuss how the unexpected presence of the partner potentially influences the data gathered from the patient. The cases demonstrate the interrelatedness of ethics and methodology in studies based on in-depth interviews with couples. Nurse researchers may be caught up in a dilemma between ethical concerns and methodological considerations. We argue that the presence of the partner during an interview session might influence the data and favour expressions of shared rather than individual experiences of the phenomenon studied. Furthermore, we argue that ethical concerns must be given higher priority than methodology when interviewing couples. An increased awareness of the tension between ethical and methodological challenges in joint or individual interviewing with patients and partners is necessary, as this issue is underexposed.

GŁÓWNE ELEMENTY METODYCZNE PROCESU PRZYGOTOWYWANIA DANYCH SPRAWOZDAWCZYCH Z ZAKRESU PODATKÓW ZWIĄZANYCH ZE ŚRODOWISKIEM W ŚWIETLE NOWYCH REGULACJI PRAWNYCH UNII EUROPEJSKIEJ

Artykuł poświęcony jest problemom metodycznym dotyczącym procesu przygotowywania danych sprawozdawczych z zakresu podatków związanych ze środowiskiem, obowiązujących w Polsce. Konieczność tworzenia tej sprawozdawczości wynika z nowych regulacji prawnych Unii Europejskiej, które nakładają na kraje członkowskie obowiązek przekazywania odpowiednio przygotowanych danych do Eurostatu. W artykule podjęto próbę rozstrzygnięcia pewnych dylematów metodycznych z tym związanych. W pierwszym rzędzie chodziło o ustalenie listy podatków związanych ze środowiskiem obowiązujących w Polsce, zgodnie z przyjętą definicją Eurostatu. Pozostałe problemy metodyczne, podjęte w artykule, dotyczyły przyporządkowania poszczególnych zidentyfikowanych podatków związanych ze środowiskiem do jednej z czterech grup rodzajowych (energia, transport, zanieczyszczenia środowiska i zasoby naturalne), a następnie – odniesienia ich do wydzielonych grup działalności gospodarczych w Unii Europejskiej (zgodnie z klasyfikacją NACE Rev. 2). Takie przyporządkowanie wymagane jest przez nowe regulacje unijne. W artykule dokonano też analizy obowiązującej, w świetle najnowszej interpretacji Eurostatu, definicji podatków (i opłat) ekologicznych określanych jednolicie jako „podatki związane ze środowiskiem”. Ponadto zaprezentowano prawne uwarunkowania wiążące się z całym procesem tworzenia sprawozdawczości statystycznej z zakresu tych podatków.

“Igual soy malísima, no esperes mucho de mí”. Reflexiones sobre la práctica etnográfica en torno al deporte

El presente trabajo expone un recorrido por algunos dilemas metodológicos del hacer etnográfico cuando hacemos antropología en contextos deportivos cercanos o de los cual formamos parte. A partir de un diálogo con los materiales de campo de mi propio trabajo etnográfico, se analizaron algunas situaciones que tuvieron lugar durante el trabajo de campo con nadadores “master”, enfocando la reflexión en tres problemáticas principales: la que refiere a la posibilidad del relativismo y sus límites, aquella que se desprende del rol del investigador en las interacciones de campo y finalmente, la cuestión emotiva y el lugar que los afectos juegan en nuestro trabajo de campo. De este modo, se considerará la reflexión metodológica como un medio para mejorar nuestro conocimiento social.

Metodologiczne dylematy i pułapki pojęcia polityczności

Methodological dilemmas and traps of the concept “political”
 A theorist defining the concept “political” needs to decide many methodological dilemmas and evade some disasters and traps, especially elementary mistakes, errors or simplifications. The distinction between the concept of “politics” and the concept of “the political” may be stereotypical, even completely popular, colloquial. However, the terminological similarity and grammatical connection between the noun and adjective or adverb result in definition difficulties. The contrary solution of the variety problem consists in the separate meaning of both concepts. Among the typical temptations for a theorist one could find the following: ontological naturalism, formalism, simple essentialism, reduction of both concepts, illusion of self‑contained political being, ignoring the historical context, syndromatic nature and relativity of the “politicality”.

The National Forest Inventory of Serbia: State and possible further directions of development

A comparative analysis of National Forest Inventories (NFI) of many countries, including Serbia was made in the manuscript, in terms of methodology and in terms of the definition of different information collected about forest ecosystems. Further development of the NFI Serbia was also analyzed. It was determined that there are differences in national methodologies, but that they are not substantial and do not constitute an obstacle to the creation of uniform databases of forests at the regional and global levels as a prerequisite for political and professional action aimed at protecting and ensuring sustainability of all forest functions. Contrary to that, differences between national definitions for information that are collected by inventory are numerous, distinct and as such represent a major obstacle to the mentioned aspirations. The solution of the problem is standardization, i.e. in the far more acceptable harmonization process (adaptation) NFI, whereby such frameworks of that activity are imposed by the FAO (globally) and COST Action E43 (mainly in the European region). NFI Serbia, on the threshold of second realization, is burdened with a numerous institutional, organizational and methodological problems and dilemmas, inherited from the first measurement of Serbian forests. Therefore, an urgent recruitment of relevant experts is necessary to resolve and overcome problems, in order to ensure all the prerequisites for a successful implementation and obtaining reliable data of the second NFI, so that the future NFI can be alleviated of the conditions in which it is currently located.

The Reframing of Methodology: Revisiting a PhD Study

The paper draws on a PhD study to explore some methodological dilemmas associated with the execution of qualitative research when framed within positivist study design. The PhD was linked to an externally funded research project which evaluated the implementation of a custody-based intervention in the secure estate. While the PhD was conceived as a qualitative study, informed by interpretivist methodology and associated epistemology, the wider funded study was informed by positivist tradition and used a quantitative method. This led to dilemmas of both practical and methodological nature. The author revisits her study's methodological position to review issues raised by the research design and suggests an alternative proposal informed methodologically by critical realism which may better serve the study's interests. In doing so, the paper suggests how revisiting previous research may assist us in gaining methodological understanding and allow us to reframe our future endeavours to more useful end.

Methodological puzzles of surveying Roma/Gypsy populations

European countries as well as the European Union are continually striving for comparable and reliable statistics about Roma, which is a precondition to efficiently support the design and implementation of national and European Union wide inclusion strategies and sectorial policies as well as monitoring their outcomes. This article aims to provide an overview of the theoretical and practical challenges researchers need to face in the course of designing and conducting survey among ‘Roma’ populations. A number of factors – such as dilemmas about the definition of the target population, methodology of sampling of a population with multiple and threatened identity, difficulties of constructing comparable indicators – have led to greatly diverging outcomes of various ‘Roma’ surveys in terms of the most essential statistics, such as the size of the population, geographical dispersion, level of poverty, level of education and employment rate. This article will summarize the various methodological decisions that research has to make by providing illustrative examples of recent research in Hungary, Romania and the European Union. It attempts to demonstrate the actual consequences of methodological decisions in terms of the varying outcomes of a crucial indicator – employment rate – produced by six independent surveys. The article’s conclusions are further reaching: data on Roma minorities are a requirement for evidence-based, efficient policy making targeted at social inclusion of Roma in Europe, and therefore understanding methodological dilemmas in the collection of this data is essential.

Forests, Trees, and Streams: Why an Integration of Discursive Psychological Frameworks and Gender Role Strain Paradigms Is Needed.

The current article provides commentary on Wetherell and Edley's (2014) article, "A Discursive Psychological Framework for Analyzing Men and Masculinities." Using examples from their published research, the authors present and challenge methodologies stemming from the gender role strain paradigm (GRSP). The core argument presented in their article is that discursive psychological approach (DP) provides a better framework for capturing situational masculinities. In this commentary, I argue for less methodological essentialism in the psychology of men and masculinities. DP has great utility for examining the ways men talk about situational enactment of masculinities. However, they do not resolve all of our methodological dilemmas. Chiefly, I suggest that we have more to gain from integrating DP frameworks and GRSP than from using either of these methods alone.

Measuring the Social Returns of Nonprofits and Social Enterprises: The Promise and Perils of the SROI

AbstractSocial Return on Investment (SROI) metrics are a new tool available to nonprofit and social enterprise organizations to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of their programs. After a short overview of three dominant methods for calculating the SROI, a case examining the implementation of an SROI study at a nationally recognized Boston-based nonprofit operating workforce development programs is presented to illuminate the methodological dilemmas across the arc of an SROI study. The case analysis centers on four key decision points in the implementation of the SROI study: identification of stakeholders, development of a method for estimating social value creation, determination of the time horizons, and selection of the discount rates. Next, to highlight the challenges in making comparisons across organizations, the second source of data is presented—a set of Yale SOM MBA student assignments conducting an SROI on a written case study found in the literature on workforce development. The student project results showcase how even when conducting SROI assessments on the same focal organization, the SROI calculation can vary widely depending on the outcome of the four decision points delineated above. The paper consequently offers two levels of analysis. First, it provides a detailed methodological overview of the reigning approaches to conducting an SROI. Second, it provides an assessment of the challenges to using SROI as a performance metric at this stage of the field’s development. Implications for use of the SROI are discussed from both the perspective of funders and the perspective of nonprofit organizations.

Recommendations and Follow-Up Measures in Monitoring, Reporting, and Fact-Finding Missions

This paper examines follow-up measures that have been undertaken in the wake of reports published by monitoring, reporting, and fact-finding missions tasked to investigate alleged violations of international humanitarian law and human rights. Section 1 explores the perspectives of both MRF practitioners and scholars on the importance of recommendations offered in MRF reports. Section 2 examines the impacts that MRF practitioners seek to achieve. Section 3 provides an overview of the methodological dilemmas of assessing the outcomes of MRF work. Section 4 presents an assessment of the implementation of recommendations articulated in reports of fifteen MRF missions implemented over the course of the past decade. Section 5 examines the factors that shape practitioners’ decisions about crafting recommendations in MRF reports. Section 6 posits questions for practitioners and policy actors to consider as part of the ongoing discourse regarding devising MRF methodologies, learning lessons from past MRF experiences, and building a community of practice among MRF practitioners.

Queer youth, Facebook and faith: Facebook methodologies and online identities

‘Making space for queer-identifying religious youth’ (2011–2013) is an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded project, which seeks to shed light on youth cultures, queer community and religiosity. While non-heterosexuality is often associated with secularism, and some sources cast religion as automatically negative or harmful to the realisation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) identity (or ‘coming out’), we explore how queer Christian youth negotiate sexual–religious identities. There is a dearth of studies on queer religious youth, yet an emerging and continuing interest in the role of digital technologies for the identities of young people. Based on interviews with 38 LGBT, ‘religious’ young people, this article examines Facebook, as well as wider social networking sites and the online environment and communities. Engaging with the key concept of ‘online embodiment’, this article takes a closer analysis of embodiment, emotion and temporality to approach the role of Facebook in the lives of queer religious youth. Furthermore, it explores the methodological dilemmas evoked by the presence of Facebook in qualitative research with specific groups of young people.

Assessing health systems in low-resource settings: some conceptual and methodological dilemmas

Demands for health system assessments have increased in recent years, partly due to a gradual shift in funding patterns – from investment in vertical disease-focused programmes, to horizontal systems aiming to strengthen health systems as a whole – and due to a need to establish the impact of this investment. There is also a pressure to monitor progress related to Millennium Development Goals (MDG) or other internationally agreed developmental targets in order to inform ongoing political processes. Citizens, health services users and communities are increasingly empowered to hold the health systems to account. Yet there are huge challenges in assessing health systems in middle and low-income settings due to scarce or poor quality data, and a lack of capacity to collect, analyze and use data. This presentation will explore some of the methodological and practical challenges faced in seeking to analyze health system performance, particularly in low-resources settings. A range of approaches for health system assessment that are commonly used will be discussed: from toolkits seeking to obtain standardized information on a range of indicators, to more exploratory rapid appraisals and theory-based evaluations. Conceptually, there are still debates about how to measure impact, how to undertake multi-method evaluations, and how to ensure that research findings inform practice. The talk will discuss the shift from a more traditional focus on performance assessment to a growing interest in interpretative health systems and policy research.

Methodological dilemmas and emotion in science

Inconsistencies in science take several forms. Some occur at the level of substantive claims about the world. Others occur at the level of methodology, and take the form of dilemmas, or cases of conflicting epistemic or cognitive values. In this article, I discuss how methodological dilemmas arise. I then consider how scientists resolve them. There are strong grounds for thinking that emotional judgement plays an important role in resolving methodological dilemmas. Lastly, I discuss whether and under what conditions this reliance on emotional judgement is rationally warranted. I consider two possible mechanisms, based on coherence and induction, able to ensure that scientists’ emotional responses to methodological dilemmas are rationally warranted.

Movie dialogues as discourse data in the study of forecasting mechanisms in the delivery of medical bad news.

Understanding the communication skills for delivering bad news, an important daily task for medical professionals, presents a challenge for most researchers due to methodological and ethical dilemmas. Movie dialogues, in which difficult communication of life-and-death issues are fundamental ingredients in creating dramatic effects, are often adopted in medical education and are thus potential data for study. By applying the concept of forecasting mechanism' in bad news delivery (Schegloff 1988; Maynard 2003), this study examines bad news delivery events depicted in three movie clips. My analysis demonstrates that (1) forecasting, as a 'macro conversation mechanism', is observed in both natural and artificial discourses; (2) two subtypes of forecasting are identifiable in movie dialogues:forecasting that directs the interaction to a 'recipient-leading-the-telling' pattern, and forecasting that constructs the delivery event as one with shared agency; and (3) the two subtypes may facilitate the deliverer's task by minimizing conflicting perspectives with the recipient, ensuring the recipient's orientation to the bad news, and freeing the deliverer from the pressure of being blamed. These findings indicate the possibility of applying movie clips in discourse research and medical education in regard to conversational strategies for difficult communication.

Progress in Evidence

In the “Effects of Change Interventions: What Kind of Evidence Do We Really Have?” Barends, Janssen, ten Have, and ten Have make several assertions about the state of organizational change management (OCM) research. Doing so, they alert us to the essence of a previously acknowledged problem in change research—that measuring change interventions is difficult (see Woodman, Bingham, & Yuan, 2008) and is fraught with challenges and constraints when it is done anyway (see Schwarz, 2012). In a similar vein, Woodman and Wayne (1985) highlight the rich history of debate on the lack of rigor and methodological dilemmas in evaluation research, which Burke (2011) explicitly concedes as often based on misleading assumptions about its measurement. Clearly, the state of OCM scholarly research is widely debated and problematized. Although we agree that it is important to evaluate critically the OCM field in terms of progress and evidence, we assert that Barends et al.’s argument is based on several errors, three of which stand out. They (a) adopt a weak categorization of progress, (b) present a narrowed range of what is evidence, and (c) unduly filter their perspective on OCM research. Our commentary addresses each of these errors. In focusing on how we research, the Barends et al. thesis misses a fundamental issue—of recognizing what is progress in OCM research. Progress is a multifaceted entity, and as Pollard (1968) pointed out, although it is portrayed as a belief “that things will in some sense get better in the future . . .it has never been limited to this simple idea of melioration” (p. 9). Yet it is precisely this variation that Barends et al. overlook in making their argument. They do so by adopting a narrow and isolating account of change assessment. In this context, and as a postscript to the article’s conclusions, progress in assessing OCM research and evaluations of how well OCM practices work are two separate issues (which they conflate in their argument).

Ethnographies of higher education: introduction to the special issue

While acknowledging that ethnography has been a rarely adopted approach in the field of higher education research, I will try to demonstrate the contributions that ethnographies have made to higher education studies. I will introduce readers to several of the most important and interesting ethnographic studies of university settings, focusing on two aspects. On the one hand, I will highlight the novel perspectives on several key themes in higher education research that are enabled by a unique ethnographic perspective. On the other hand, I will spotlight ethnography itself by focusing on the ways the studies were conducted, especially on the methodological and epistemological dilemmas inherent in ethnographic research.

The structure of personality of a good teacher from students perspective according to the Big-Five model

This paper deals with the identification of desirable personality characteristics of teachers from students perspective in the Big-Five Model of personality from a phenomenological approach. The description of personality of a good teacher was obtained from students of the University of Novi Sad (n=443). The Big Five Inventory (BFI) was applied with the instruction to respond to claims as a good teacher would answer. The students? estimates indicate that a good teacher is expected to have lower emotional instability, but more pronounced extroversion, openness to experience, cooperativeness (pleasantness) and consciousness with regard to referent values in general population. For the domain of neuroticism, the difference is either small or medium in size, for cooperativeness of a medium size, and for extroversion, consciousness and openness to experience the difference is large. The gender of students does not influence their expectations. Methodological dilemmas in this area of research and implications of the results for the selection and professional development of teachers are discussed.