Rationales for re-studies If the original study was not sound, it - - PDF document

19-Apr-18 1 Reflections on the value of ethnographic re-studies

Martyn Hammersley The Open University

Symposium to celebrate the academic career of Professor Robert Burgess, University of Leicester, May 2014

Background

• Study and Re-study of Bishop McGregor: 1973-4,

1984 (Burgess 1981, 1983, 1987).

• The rarity of re-studies in the sociology of

education.

• Re-studies much more common in the field of

anthropological and sociological community studies (Crow 2012).

• Investigation of schools-as-communities:

Hargreaves (1967), Lacey (1970), Ball (1980), Burgess (1983).

• Problems with re-studies: getting back into the

field, controversies over findings.

Rationales for re-studies

• Replication
• Mapping change over time
• Exploring new aspects of a case

Many re-studies combine these three purposes. There are some tensions amongst them.

Tensions

• If the original study was not sound, it cannot be

used as a baseline to investigate change.

• If the community has changed, then replication is

no longer possible.

• If the re-study investigates different aspects of

the institution or community from the original investigation, it can serve neither replication nor the mapping of change.

• Is not variation in findings simply a product of

differences in the personal outlook of the researcher or of the methods and theoretical framework used?

A couple of classic controversies

• Robert Redfield (1930) and Oscar Lewis (1951)
• n Tepoztlán: ‘where Redfield found harmony,

Lewis found conflict’.

• Margaret Mead (1928), Wendell Holmes

(1987), and Derek Freeman (1983, 1998) on Samoa: ‘the greatest controversy in anthropology for over 100 years’ (see Bryman 1994).

The contrast between the accounts of Redfield and Lewis

‘Lewis found Tepoztlán to be strikingly different from the way that Redfield had portrayed it. Whereas Redfield had seen Tepoztlán as a harmonious and contented village, Lewis discovered it to be riven with strife. Not only were villagers discontented because they were ill-fed and disease-ridden, but also they were filled with jealousy for and mistrust

• f their fellow villagers. Tepoztlán, in short, did not

resemble the intimate folk society Redfield had described.’ (Wilcox 2004:66)

19-Apr-18 2

Explaining the discrepancy

• Redfield or Lewis got it wrong, or perhaps

both did.

• Tepoztlán had changed in the interim.
• The discrepancies between the two accounts

reflect differences in the personalities, theoretical orientations, or methodological approaches of the two investigators.

This case ‘provides a most interesting example of the difference in perception and selection of materials between the two ethnographers. Redfield was interested in harmony; he was interested in what made things go

• well. Oscar, as everybody knows, was interested in what

made things go badly. As a result, those two studies which are very interesting and very informative, are excellent statements about the temperaments of those two men.’ (Mead 1976:144) Replying to criticism, Lewis writes: ‘It seems to me that concern with what people suffer from is more productive

• f insight about the human condition, about the

dynamics of conflict and the forces for change. To stress the enjoyment in peasant life [as Redfield agreed he did] is to argue for its preservation and inadvertently to boost tourism’ (Lewis 1970:252).

Variation in the character of re-studies

• Lone researcher versus team research.
• Original researcher(s) carry out the re-study

versus new researcher(s) carrying it out.

• Same methods versus different methods

employed.

• Short versus long time period between study

and re-study. These types of variation have important implications for the nature of any re-study, and for which of the purposes it can serve.

Burgess re-study

• Single researcher on both occasions.
• Same researcher carried out original study and re-

study.

• Somewhat different methods employed.
• 10 year time gap.
• Slightly different focus: original study examined

the experience of teachers and students in ‘Newsom classes’, whereas re-study looked particularly at the role of the headteacher and the senior management team.

• Useful findings, for example about the effects of

falling rolls on schools. And little controversy!

Questions

• Do re-studies simply open up a logical impasse,

revealing or perhaps even generating intractable problems, thereby damaging the reputation of social research?

• Or do they, as Redfield argued, demonstrate ‘the

power of social science to revise its conclusions and to move towards the truth’, a point with which Lewis agreed?

• It is easy to exaggerate the discrepancies between

studies, and this has been done in some of the controversies, and to exaggerate the tensions among different purposes of re-study. Usually they can be resolved pragmatically, as Bob showed.

Conclusion: the value of re-study

• It highlights threats to the validity of social

research findings, but can also show that the findings are more robust than critics claim. Provides a means of assessing the significance of validity threats.

• Offers a strategy for investigating change in ways

that take account of local variation, for example as regards the impact of state policies, or of broad social trends.

• Why aren’t more re-studies done? The idolatry of

the new!

19-Apr-18 3

References

Ball, S. (1981) Beachside Comprehensive: A case-study of comprehensive schooling, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Bryman, A. (1994) 'The Mead/Freeman Controversy: Some Implications for Qualitative Researchers', in R. G. Burgess (ed.) Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Vol. 4, Greenwich CT, JAI Press. Burgess, R. G. (1981) An Ethnographic Study of a Comprehensive school, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick. Burgess, R. G. (1983) Experiencing Comprehensive Education: a study of Bishop McGregor School, London, Methuen. Burgess, R. (1987) ‘Studying and re-studying Bishop McGregor school’, in Walford, G. (ed.) Doing Sociology of Education, London, Falmer Press. Freeman, D. (1983) Margaret Mead and Samoa: the making and unmaking of an anthropological myth, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press. Freeman, D. (1998) The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A historical analysis of her Samoan research, Boulder, Westview Press. Hargreaves, D. H. (1967) Social Relations in a Secondary School, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. Holmes, L. (1987) Quest for the Real Samoa: the Mead-Freeman controversy and beyond, Massachusetts, Bergin and Harvey. Lacey, C. (1970) Hightown Grammar, Manchester, Manchester University Press. Lewis, O. (1951) Life in a Mexican Village: Tepoztlán Restudied, Urbana, ILL, University of Illinois Press. Lewis, O. (1953) ‘Controls and experiments in fieldwork’, in Kroeber, A. (eds) Anthropology Today, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Lewis, O. (1970) Anthropological Essays, New York, Random House. Mead, M. (1928) Coming of Age in Samoa, New York, Morrow. Mead, M. (1976) ‘Discussion: American ethnology: the role of Redfield’ (other discussants: J. Collins, E. C. Hughes, and J. Griffin), in Murra, J. (ed.) American Anthropology: the early years, Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society 1974, St Paul MINN, West Publishing Co.