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CIAO DATE: 12/99
Making Research Matter
Seminar on Research in a Divided Society
October 22, 1997
Abstract of paper presented at INCORE/CCRU Seminar on Research in a Divided Society, Malone House, Belfast, 22 October 1997.
I was particularly pleased to be asked to give this presentation as I can remember well John Whyte’s Professorial Lecture where he discussed this theme. I remember too the depressed feeling that many people had on leaving the lecture, as John Whyte’s message was essentially a pessimistic one. In this presentation my assessment will be much more optimistic. While the sheer amount of social research on the Northern Ireland conflict has continued to grow enormously, more important, I think the quality of much of that research has grown as well, as has its impact on social policy.
In John Whyte’s presentation he identified three main criteria for assessing the value of social research. First, to inform future generations of scholars. Second, to test general theories. And third, to have an influence on policy. I would propose to discuss briefly where I think we now stand in relation to each of these areas and, more specifically, to contrast the situation now with the one described by John Whyte.
John’s first criterion was that research might be of value if it informed future generations of scholars. In a sense this criterion is always difficult to test as our actual ability to meet it can, of necessity, only be judged in the longer term. That said, it is possible to see this criterion as encouraging us to provide as informed a basis for the future as possible. One of the frustrating things about attempting to explain events in the past lies in our inability to go back in time to collect new data which would help to throw light on events. Rather we are necessarily restricted by the data that were collected at the time. And in the Northern Ireland of the 1960s those data were very limited. If we view the criterion in this way then I think we can say that the situation is now reasonably positive. There is a lot of research which collects and records basic reference data that will prove to be of great value in the future. Given the vagaries of government, and more particularly government secrecy, the significance and full context of these data will only perhaps be fully realised in time. Indeed, it is only in the fullness of time, and the 30 year rule, that a fuller picture of the influences on particular decisions will be available. Given this reality, it is important that as adequate an information base is laid down now.
The second criterion that John Whyte considered was that research might be of value in that it would allow for the testing of general theories. At that time John focused on Marxist explanations of the Northern Ireland conflict and considered the extent to which research information allowed for some assessment of these explanatory frameworks. In the context of the time it was not surprising that he should use that framework as a test case. There was then a lot of Marxism, or Marxisms, around, as indeed there were a lot of Marxists around, and this was one framework which did claim to offer an overarching grand theory. The context now, however, is quite different. Now, in a post-modern world, we might reject such overarching frameworks as reflecting a totalising myth. In the post-modern world there are no grand meta-narratives, no claimed explanations of everything, but rather partial explanations of some things.
Adopting this more modest agenda still allows us to ask the question as to whether or not research on the Northern Ireland conflict offers some insight into these more limited theoretical perspectives. On one level this may be an issue of primarily academic interest. However it remains possible that fruitful connections may be made between research carried out to address theoretical concerns and practical considerations of the moment. I think it is possible to identify some such connections, particularly in comparative research, and some of these have helped to widen the agenda of the possible when policy options are under consideration. We know of the work supported by INCORE, and others, to compare the peace processes in South Africa, the Middle East and Northern Ireland. More generally we have seen valuable and practical contributions from political science research on voting methods and procedures, research on law and human rights, comparative work on equal opportunities policies in North America and Northern Ireland, and psychological research on contact between divided peoples. Some of the research on these areas began with a theoretical interest, but has contributed to practical policy.
The third criterion mentioned by John Whyte concerned the effect and influence of research on policy. Perhaps this was his third criterion because he saw it as the least important of the three? If so, the main point to make now may relate to the increased significance of this criterion.
John Whyte suggested that in order for research to effect policy, researchers needed an audience and something to say. The audiences he identified were politicians, who he felt were generally not that interested in research, and the civil service. Civil servants, he felt, were sometimes interested in the possible value of research evidence, but were more often than not too busy to have time to digest this evidence. When John discussed whether or not researchers had something to say he went on to clarify it as having something useful to say as quite often the problem was not whether researchers had something to say, but rather that a lot of different ones had quite different things to say. John Whyte concluded:
It is highly focused research, directed at a specific problem, which is most likely to receive attention. The broader the topic which a researcher sets himself, the less likely he is to have an impact on policy.
I would suggest that this conclusion is as valid now as it was then, but that very much more research can be seen to fall into this category then at the time John Whyte spoke, and that this is why research can be seen to have a more positive impact on our understanding and ability to deal with the conflict in Northern Ireland. The audiences now are wider: in addition to politicians and civil servants we have a range of non-departmental public bodies, or quangos, with their bewildering plethora of acronyms - SACHR, FEC, EOC, NIEC - and an equally large array of lobby and pressure groups operating outside the government system. These include old social movements, such as the trade unions and the Churches, and new social movements, such as the single-issue groups on legal issues, CAJ, or the environment. In addition, within the government system the operation of statistical and information expertise through PPRU and, more recently, NISRA, has helped to enhance the level of social data collected by government and the use to which such data are made.
Perhaps too John’s point on researchers having something to say can be widened a little. Sometimes what researchers have to say is in accord with the views of one or other of the potential audiences and is thus taken up with gusto. Sometimes the message informs an audience, and I think it is true to say that, within the government system, there have been a significant number of occasions when genuine and open requests for information and ideas have been made. Various aspects of the work of the Central Community Relations Unit come to mind here. There are occasions, when the messages from research challenge the views of some of the audiences and, as researchers, we have to accept that our finely honed conclusions will not always necessarily have the effect we might think they deserve. Sometime, in other words, the challenge is too challenging.
We might also consider ways in which the policy environment has changed in comparison with the time that John Whyte was writing. In relation to the conflict there has been a more elaborated commitment to a community relations policy from government. This has been accompanied by the development of an infrastructure within government to carry the policy forward and, arguably, a beneficial pluralism in the input to the policy agenda, not least through the Anglo-Irish Secretariat. All of these factors have created conditions within which a more positive orientation may be held towards the research contribution.
We not only have greater pluralism within the policy community, but also within the academy. I remember as a postgraduate student in Queens being told that, in the period before the conflict broke out, there was little encouragement for those who wished to research aspects of social divisions in Northern Ireland, and sometimes active discouragement to such suggestions. Greater pluralism in the academy brings with it more critical voices and perspectives, but this is important in challenging the assumptions upon which policy is based, and it is through such challenges that evolution and development occurs. Again, not all the challenges are welcome or heeded, but the fact that they are there is healthy.
In continuing this theme of pluralism I think we can see a greater diversity now in funding opportunities. Obviously, where there is a single funding source for a particular area of social research, then that source has a great deal of power over the research agenda. A wider range of funding sources allows for wider and widening agendas, which in turn encourages a plurality of contributions to policy discussions. What we can see, therefore, is more pluralism in all aspects of policy-oriented research, which has led, I would suggest, to more of that research and its net effect on the policy process being greater also. This is not to say, of course, that everyone would agree that the impact of particular pieces of research is always worthwhile. Disagreements over the conclusions to be derived from a piece of research are not always only between researchers and policy-makers. The research community itself involves people from diverse backgrounds and positions, and there will sometimes be fierce disagreement between researchers on the value of specific research studies. An example lies in some research I was involved with a few years ago with Bob Cormack and Bob Osborne, and to which a number of others , including Seamus Dunn and Dominic Murray, made an important contribution. This research dealt with aspects of the funding of Catholic schools as it related to the differential level of academic achievement that was found among leavers from Catholic and Protestant schools. The research was commissioned and carried out for SACHR, whose eventual recommendations included an increase in the number of places in Catholic grammar schools and more monitoring of the impact of policy on the religious school systems. Undoubtedly this had an impact of policy, in that it changed the way certain things were done, but I know others within the research community felt that the recommendations should have gone in quite a different direction. I suppose the key issue for our present concerns is less in the specific nature of the impact of research on policy, although obviously this is important, but rather that the question of it having an impact arises in the first place.
There is one issue, however, that is worth dwelling on a little, and this will be my concluding point. One of the points John Whyte made in his lecture was to highlight the sheer volume of research and academic comment on Northern Ireland that had been published. Indeed, the contrast between the amount and the impact of this work was what gave his conclusion such a pessimistic air. If anything the amount of research available now is even greater, but I have argued here that its impact is much more pronounced. That said, there is not only a lot more research now, and a lot more good research, but I suspect we have to learn to live with the fact that there is also quite a lot of pretty awful research out there as well. I mentioned earlier that there are a lot of different inputs to the policy process and that the research contribution is only one of these. In order to maintain its value I strongly believe that the research contribution has to be distinctive in some way. The obvious distinctiveness of the social science contribution lies in the way we are supposed to relate to evidence and argument. Essentially, social researchers should base their claims on evidence, with the standard of proof being directly related to the nature of the claim, and should be prepared to change their mind in the face of compelling evidence. Politicians and lobby groups try to win arguments and deploy evidence to this effect. We should not worry is they sometimes cut fast and loose with some of the evidence in making a case - after all, this is what they are there for. But researchers should not fall into the trap of becoming polemicists, or selecting from amongst the evidence simply to bolster a particular case. To the extent that we do this, we weaken the distinctive value of the social scientific contribution. This is not to say also that social researchers can retain some sort of Olympian distance from the political issues of the day. A sense of engagement is important because this influences the topics on which we choose to work. I am interested in research on racism, not because it is an interesting topic, but because I believe that racism is wrong; I am interested in work on education for mutual understanding, not because it is an interesting topic, but because I believe it is worthwhile trying to promote greater tolerance and understanding among young people. Engagement is important, but we should, nevertheless, try to main a line between winning an argument and critical examination of an issue. A not unimportant aspect of this lies in the commitment of social researchers to the basic tools and procedures of our trade. It sometimes amazes me the way in which people are prepared to draw general conclusions from some data, without the most basic regard to issues of sampling, analysis or reporting. The specific technical aspects of social research are our quality controls and it is important that we maintain these standards if we want to be taken seriously by others.
To conclude then. I have argued that the amount of research carried out on the Northern Ireland conflict is even greater now than in the past and that the impact of that research is greater than in the past. An important part of my argument is that the enhanced impact is less related to the volume of research and more to the nature of that research. Now, I think, much more social research is focused on the practical concerns of policy, whereas in the past perhaps more academic contributions tried to offer grand explanations of the conflict. Arguably we now have much more modest ambitions for what we do. In the past perhaps we tried to explain too much and were disappointed when we appeared to fail. Now we seek to contribute to better understanding of events, but also to offer ideas and suggestions for making things better. If we can achieve this I think we can be satisfied.
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