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

608 Pierre de Bie
various disciplines; multidisciplinary research is thus often the spontaneous an-
swer when it comes to carrying out a problem-focused research project. The sheer
variety of disciplines contributing is enough to guarantee its multidisciplinary
character.
But when a particular investigation incorporates the findings of several disci-
plines, borrows their tools and techniques, above all when it makes use of
conceptual patterns and analyses pertaining to several branches of knowledge
in order - once these have been compared and appraised - with a view to bring-
ing them together, we are dealing with interdisciplinary activity. Similarly, where
certain concepts or terms are common to several sciences, there we may find the
starting-point for interdisciplinary research; recourse to new theoretical con-
cepts, which, taken up again in several fields of knowledge, may cross-fertilize
them (systems and information theories semeiological research, research on
decision-making), can be considered in the same perspective. It must surely prove
rewarding for the disciplines concerned to recognize and explore more fully what
they may have in common. This comes within the scope of interdisciplinary
research, whose principal aim is the integration of knowledge.
The distinction between multi- and interdisciplinary research is, then, based
above all on the degree of association amongst disciplines, which may range
from simple juxtaposition to highly advanced integration.
The transition from the first to the second is gradual. It may be brought out
more clearly by the following examples:
a. Research workers in different disciplines make a parallel study of various
aspects of a single problem and submit separate reports; thanks to this
juxtaposition, it is hoped that further light will be shed on the problem under
consideration.
6. Research workers in different disciplines tackle the same problem simul-
taneously and synchronize their efforts, exchange findings and draft separate
reports which wil be prefaced by a joint report attempting to integrate all
these findings; in this instance what is sought is some degree of convergence,
if not throughout the investigation, then at least in the comparison of
findings.
c. Research workers tackle a single problem together, compare their working
hypotheses, make a critical assessment of each other’s methods and draft a
final joint report.
d. One discipline has recourse to the tools and techniques of others so as to
arrive at a better understanding of its own aims (cf. the contribution made
by mathematics and statistics to the social sciences).
e. One discipline uses the results of others; as examples, we may quote the use
made in sociology of the data of human geography, the recourse had to
sociological data in order to interpret demographic phenomena or to supple-
ment the economic analysis of an industrial firm, or again the reliance on
psychoanalysis in order to clarify the relationship between culture and per-
sonality, etc. (at this point interdisciplinary areas emerge : rural sociology,
sociology of population, socio-economy of industrial firms, social psycho-
analysis).