Exam essay: Action research
January 8, 2009
In this essay, I describe action science: what it is, and how you do it. I describe some characteristics of good action science research, and compare it to design, fixed and flexible research.
Exam essay: Action research
Describe action science: what is it, how do you do it, what is good action science, and how do you evaluate it relative to other traditions. Compare to social science research.
In this essay, I describe action science. I talk about what it is, and describe some methodology for how you do it. I describe some characteristics of good action science research, and compare it to design, fixed and flexible research.
Action research was first used in the mid 1940s, but did see much adoption in social science until the last few decades. In that time it has become increasingly well adopted in education research has become a very viable option for organization science and IS researchers. Action research and its variant participatory action research are research methodologies that do what Robson calls “emancipatory science.” The fundamental tenet of action research is that we learn about how a social process or system a system works by purposely introducing a change to that system and seeing what happens.
The foundation of action research is the understanding that human social systems are complex and that they cannot be understood by breaking them down into component pieces. They must be examined in whole in the context in which they live. Further, humans are not experimental subjects: they are independent beings with free will who should be treated as the equal to the researcher in the research process. Thus we research them by bringing the researcher to the context under study, and include the people who are part of the process or system under study directly in the research process. In traditional action research, the researcher still holds a privileged position in the research process in that they can be said to be the one doing the majority of the research work, while in participatory action research, the researcher empowers the participants in the study with the tools to carry out research on their own.
Action research has several necessary characteristics: the researcher studies a problem of direct interest to the social process or system in question which will produce findings that can be immediately applied back both to the context and to the field; the study will be firmly grounded in theory, linking theory to practice; and the research will use qualitative and flexible data collection and analysis methods. The firm foundation of action science in theory and its emphasis on making scientific as well as pragmatic contributions is what distinguishes action science from consulting. Action science data analysis is interpretive in that the researcher invariably becomes part of the process or context and thus there is an unavoidable viewpoint in some of the data collection and analysis of researcher-as-subject. It is idiographic in that since the work is done within a particular context, it necessarily must be interpreted in light of symbols, ideas, conventions and meanings from that context.
Action research is a cyclical process, and each cycle of the process has some well defined phases:
- Identify and characterize the problem to be studied and addressed
- Identify relevant theory that can help in understanding the problem and in identifying an action to take in perturbing the social process or system.
- Evaluate the current situation: what is happening now?
- Define an action to perform which perturbs the social process or system
- Evaluate the effects of the action on the social process or system, if there are any effects.
- Use those results to decide what to do next. This can be any or all of: identify another problem to be studied and addressed, choose different theories, choose different action. This part necessarily involves self-reflection on the part of the participants
- Repeat the cycle.
In traditional action research, the researcher is performing most of these steps, while in participatory action research, the researcher acts more as a mentor and source of knowledge of social science theory to the participant-researchers, teaching them how to do the research themselves and having them do it: identify the problem, evaluate the current situation, choose action, perform action, evaluate results, repeat. In this way, in some cases, action research performed in a context may be self sustaining
Action research can be a frustrating process for many reasons, and researchers should plan accordingly. It takes time to introduce meaningful change to a social system (Robson says “allow at least two years”). Planned actions may have no effect or have a different or opposite effect than that intended. People in the social context may be very resistant to the idea of change. There is always a political dimension to action research, which at least involves changing how a social system works, and may involve teaching participants how to carry on the process of change on their own. In some cases, the research will be done with the support of the parent government or organization, and in some the researcher will have no such support or may be inhibited from performing the work.
From the point of view of the researcher, action research can be very rewarding since through it the researcher can effect real change to real social systems, but it can also be frustrating career wise. Since in action research it is difficult to predict from the start where the research may ultimately end up (due to the iterative nature), it is difficult to found a cohesive theme for one’s research. There is also a lack of agreed upon criteria among editors and researchers for evaluating action research, and since action research papers tend to run longer than fixed, flexible and design research papers (because of the iterative nature), it may be difficult to find a journal to accept such papers.
As compared with design research, action research differs in the focus of the research. Design research is artifact focused: identify a problem and design an artifact to solve the problem, then evaluate how well the artifact does so. The focus of action research is the system and the changes introduced. We may introduce an IT artifact as the change to perturb the system, but it is ultimately the system that we are interested in.
As compared with fixed research, action research differs in many fundamental ways. Action research, like many forms of flexible research, looks at a human system from the inside (intepretivist and idiographic) treating people in the system as collaborators or co-researchers. Fixed research looks at it (or tries to do so) from the outside, as the researcher performing experiments upon subjects. There is also less or no emphasis in fixed research in returning useful, applicable findings back to the people in the research context as there is in action research. The data collection and analysis techniques between fixed and action research are of course different: quantitative and determined in advance for fixed; qualitative and adjusted on the fly for action research.
As compared with flexible research, action research and flexible research are similar in technique, but differ in stance. Action research borrows many techniques from flexible research types (especially case studies, grounded research and ethnographies). But where in flexible research the researcher takes a passive stance, observing and reporting the system or process and trying to not influence it, in action research the researcher of course necessarily takes an active stance and purposely changes the system and becomes therefore a participant in it. The idea of the researcher “going native” is frowned upon as a source of validity concerns in flexible research, but happens as a matter of course in action research.
My self-critique:
This one was harder than I would have thought, and it was really hard for me to start. I’ve been going without much sleep for the last two days because my daughter is sick and has been up many times a night, and also I’ve had some crises to deal with at work. As such, I’ve not been studying or writing, and I lost my momentum. I got it back towards the end of page two.
I actually started this, and just couldn’t go past the first paragraph. I had to go back and review all my notes for action science. And then a few times (especially for caveats regarding action science, the political nature of action science, and evaluating action science), I had to stop writing and go back to my notes.
I am still not sure how action science is evaluated. “How does one evaluate action research” was a question from a prior year. I’ve never seen it written up anywhere, but I guess if I were pressed I could take two tacks: first, use the three guidelines (solves a real problem for the context, returns valuable findings back to the context, links theory to practice); second, evaluate validity concerns like one would do for flexible research, esp. case studies. I would imagine that action research papers come out like a cross between narrative and case study.
I say (because I read this in the CAIS paper) that action science papers are long, but what about “Informating the clan?” That was MISQ length, but I wonder if it was detailed enough. Possibly. Maybe I should say that action science papers “can be long.”
I should definitely include the kinds of things that one might use action research for in IS: organizational change, system design, scientific research, training (CAIS paper). There are also levels of participation for the researcher: collaborative, facilitative and expert