How Things Work - Doha Academy of Tertiary Studies

How things Work 25
large, and we would like to promise that we will find causes, but we cannot,
neither with certainty nor even with a high degree of confidence.
We seek to understand how something works. Whether we are
quantitative or qualitative researchers, we do need to search for causes,
for influences, for preconditions, for correspondences. Our findings and
stories can enlighten those seeking to understand the history or the problem
or seeking to change the policy. But the data, however analyzed, do
not themselves resolve the problem. It is the interpretation of the data,
of the observations and measurements, that will stand, not as proof but
as persuasion of one meaning more than another. We think about causes
because it helps discipline our research. But we should keep in mind
Tolstoy’s obsession with the idea of countless multiple causes.
Still, we work with people who think of simple cause and effect. It
is clear to them that things are caused. It seldom will be useful for us to
preach to them Tolstoy’s religion of multiple concurrences. We should
try to minimize overexpectations of causality, but we sometimes have to
talk their language.
For the more immediate future, we should edit our sentences carefully
to diminish the “attribution to cause.” We should not say, “The
director terminated the policy because he was upset.” but “The director
terminated the policy. He said that he was upset.” We should not
say, “The River Dnieper froze because the temperature dropped below
zero Celsius,” but “The River Dnieper froze as the temperature dropped
below zero Celsius.” We should not say, “The disability program was
stopped because the bond issue failed,” but “After the bond issue failed,
the disability program was stopped.”—Or is it important to reduce the
implications we make about causality? You have to decide. (So, in my
view, the section wasn’t so boring after all.)
1.6. the thiNG
The word thing isn’t a technical word. But we need it as a technical word
for the best use of this book. Let’s use the word thing to identify the
target of the research project. There isn’t a technical word for the target,
and there needs to be. So what researchers are studying is “the thing.”
The thing could be an organization, such as an employment bureau or a
child-care center. The thing could be a policy, such as a triage policy or
a civil rights policy. It could be a relationship between the churches of a