Blog1: What are the particular difficulties that researchers face when there are no step by step procedures to follow, yet there is a requirement for the systematic analysis of a dataset?

It is considered that formalization and interpretation are two main essential parts when doing social science research. Thus, when we are talking about the effect of clear procedures to the analysis, it can be proceed with this two portions.

It’s said by Pascale( 2010) that, ‘Procedures for formalization enable researchers to make credible scientific claims about groups of people.’ What’s more, because people are getting used to this pattern of doing research, the way of generating ‘scientific’ findings is regard as the most proper way of doing research. Therefore, without the procedures of formalization, the research done by people may not be accepted by academic world, as it’s considered the steps of formalization is vital to be obeyed.

In addition, the process of formalization is also be challenged by other scientists.Trough Pascale’s (2010) article, we can know that ‘By examining the social organization of knowledge in institutional settings, smith (1990a, 1990b, 1999) developed a cultural framing of knowledge production within the thick description of ethnography.’ However, it’s also rejected by the mainstream social research.

Another task of doing social research is interpretation. Interpretation is a kind of way to explain the significance of evidence.Because the numbers of the interpretations are usually large. In addition, it also depends on the knowledge quantities of audience and the type of context pretended to read. Thus, without the clear process of the steps, it’s hard to tell the interpretation is either a politic action or a real scientific translation.

What’s more, there are lots of similarity of formalization and interpretation. In history, the scientists did not limit too much on the process of interpretation. It’s said’s a result, social scientists have elaborated on a variety of processes of interpretation, while processes of formalization remain largely unchanged.'(Pascale ,2000) Thus, without the steps of doing interpretation, it cannot contains too much explanation including feminist, critical race, and interpretive.

Reference:

Pascale, Celine-Marie. 2010. “Philosophical Roots of Research Methodologies.” In Cartographies of Knowledge: Exploring Qualitative Epistemologies. 13-38. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Jiaxi Wang