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

636 Pierre de Bie
order to define the field of research, invited to pursue this dialogue until certain
decisions are taken, the specialist in problem-focused research cannot be igno-
rant of the aims pursued. There is a great risk that he will not remain sufficiently
critical, that he will fail to take a sufficiently long view and that he will in fact be
more concerned about knowledge which serves in a particular perspective: by
that we mean not the perspective of action but the perspective of a specified
action. In other words, there is real danger that the researcher may become a
partisanof a particular type of planning, pursuing his research with certain
forms of development in view, that he may share an ideology of planning, re-
lated to, for example, technocratic values, to an ideal of development which is
mainly economic and technical, or to democratic change.
However, there are no doubt cases in which the pressure of values is such that
the objectivity of research is immediately prejudiced, sometimes to such a degree
that there is no longer any question of scientific research. The classic case is that
of the client who is ready to ‘buy replies’ which may lend a scientific and un-
challengeable status to his personal aims and wishes. But there are many cases
in which the penetration of values prejudicial to the quality of problem-focused
research is much less clear, more subtle.
Let us take an example from the field of studies of family life. In a comparative
study of the standards of measurement applied to various aspects of family life -
such as the relation between spouses or between parents and children, or the
degrees of integration and harmony in the family - Murray A. Strauss points out
the influence of moral and ethical bias: of 263 standards of measurements
listed he classes about 40% as of an ‘evaluative’ type, that is to say, based on
what is considered ‘desirable’, ‘satisfactory’ or ‘good‘ family behaviour as
distinct from ‘undesirable’, ‘unsatisfactory’ or ‘bad‘ behaviour.96 Various major
inconveniences may follow from using this type of evaluative standard. For
example, there is a risk of ascribing importance to variables chosen as a result
of conscious or unconscious evaluations by the research worker, when such
importance would not have been given to them in a neutral or objective analysis.
Or else one runs the risk of blending in a standard of measurement of an evalua-
tive type, items which theoretically do not belong together but which seem
capable, on the researcher’s assessments, of moving in the same direction. That
is the case, for example, with the Kell-Hoeflin test for comparing families of the
traditional and of a more modern type: the methods of appraisal are such that
all the responses which indicate warmth, intimacy or understanding, and all
declarations expressing affection or satisfactory inter-family relationships are
related to the more modern type of family, while the replies indicating lack of
affection, coldness, absence of understanding and unsatisfactory relations inside
the family are classed as indicating a family of the traditional type. Thus families
which are very liberal but whose personal relationships are not very satisfactory
would be classified as traditional. It is not surprising that the method, conceived
in this way, merely coniirms what it was required to confirm.97
What of the multidisciplinary associations, the co-operation between specia-
lists in the sciences of man? Such co-operation does not occur solely in the
field of the sciences of man, but also in that of the natural sciences. It corresponds