Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

CHAPTER M
Problem-focused research
PIERRE DE BIE
INTRODUCTION
Contacts, communications, links, exchanges, fruitful and creative relationships :
these are primary goals for many of our contemporaries in a changing world
where the processes of specialization and differentiation which make for separa-
tion are developing at an ever-increasing pace. Individual efforts sometimes
pursued over a long period on parallel but separate lines, need to be compared,
reconciled and integrated. These problems of synthesis are to be found in a
great many sectors of human activity and they are by no means new. They arise
alike on the plane of knowledge and on that of action. The profusion of special-
izations and the speed with which they severally develop confer new dimensions
on such problems. This applies particularly in the case of action for which
scientific preparations and projections have been made; here data must be
collected and compared and then knowledge coupled with action.
Within the human sciences, between the realm of pure thought dealing with
theory, where knowledge alone matters and is of intrinsic value, and that of
informed action, where utility and practical considerations take precedence,
there is a vast area where questions of theory and utility mingle in varying propor-
tions. In this area, the desire for knowledge is to a certain extent linked with the
desire for action. This is the field of study which is described as problem-focused
research.
This field is extremely broad and varied; on an initial approach it seems to
defy definition. The first thing is undoubtedly to attempt to explain and delimit
it clearly by an analysis of the concepts and an examination of sectors of investi-
gation in which important and characteristic developments have been achieved.
Several instances of empirical research will be mentioned. They might equally
well be inserted at other places in the text than at the one chosen, but there is
necessarily bound to be an element of arbitrariness in any arrangement.-,The
account given in this chapter represents an attempt to deal systematically with
matters that are highly diverse.
After defining problem-focused research and placing it in its context, we