13. Methods are devised for checking data quality (e.g., informants’knowledgeability, ulterior motives) and for guarding against ethnocentric explanation.
14. In-field work analysis is documented.
15. Meaning is elicited from cross-cultural perspective.
16. Ethical standards are followed.
17. People in the research setting benefit some way.
18. Data-collection strategies are the most adequate and efficient available. The researcher is careful to be reflexive and recognize when he or she is‘‘going native.’’
19. Study is tied into ‘‘the big picture.’’ The researcher looks holistically at the setting to understand the linkages among systems.
20. Researcher traces the historical context to understand how institutions and roles have evolved (Marshall and Rossman, 1995, pp. 146–148; reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Inc.)
people- and organization-oriented research agenda of Pfiffner. Pfiffner (1940) writes: ‘‘The social scientist who feels inferior in the presence of the physicist, chemist, or engineer, should remember that a great share of their knowledge is based on accepted practice rather than precise measurement’’(p. 18).
This line of thought in the 1980s and 1990s was pursued with great eloquence by other public administration scholars. Discussing the experiments as endeavors to control extraneous variables, Bailey (1994) convincingly shows similarities between case studies and experiments:‘‘The outcome of an experiment, then, is essentially a hypothesis, and each experiment is, in reality, a case study.
A set of case studies can be used to challenge dominant theories or for applied research projects in fields (medicine, engineering, etc.) that are derived from ‘pure’ disciplines’’ (p. 187). She also discusses how criteria of scientific rigor can be applied to case studies. Behn (1992) points out that even physicists use empirically nonproven concepts in their theories:‘‘Many of the observations that they [physicists] use to create reality are only indirect. Neutrinos exist—just like gravity exists—not because they are observed directly, but because something is observed that should happen if neutrinos or gravity exist. The only advantage that neutrinos and gravity have over other realities—over, say, angels—is that the mathematics that the physicists have invented . . . can be used to make very specific predictions . . . and that these predictions are confirmed by observations’’
(p. 111). Behn (1992) convincingly legitimizes the exploratory, meaning-seeking nature of the research in the field of public administration: ‘‘The reality of the managerial world is created by those who write about the world . . . those who are most persuasive in their writings—those who use metaphors that othersfind most evocative of the managerial world they‘know’—define managerial reality’’(p. 418). As a result, Behn (1992) concludes that‘‘Research in public management—just like research in physics—is a search for meaningful metaphors’’(p. 418).
Although issues of comparison with natural sciences have been raised since the formative years of public administration as a discipline, issues of epistemology in public administration (as in social sciences in general) have only been discussed since the 1970s. Mitroff and Pondy (1974) identify three inquiry systems: Leibnizian inquiry (deductive, formal reasoning), Lockean inquiry (inductive reasoning), and Kantian inquiry (trying to reconcile the two former systems). White (1994) identifies three research approaches (explanatory, interpretive, and critical) and discusses their implications for public administration studies. Adams (1994), White and Adams (1994), Farmer (1995), and Fox and Miller (1995) discuss public administration from the postmodern perspective.
Bureaucracy has been studied from phenomenological (Hummel, 1994a,b), critical (Denhardt, 1981), and postmodern (Farmer, 1995; Fox and Miller, 1995) perspectives. A good source for debate over the nature of research in the discipline of public administration in the 1980s is the Public Administration Review articles collection edited by White and Adams (1994), Research in Public Administration: Reflections on Theory and Practice, as well as articles inAdministrative Theory and Praxis, and sometimes,Administration and Society.
Increasingly, the arguments for new, more inclusive criteria to judge the research in public administration are taking hold in the discipline. As opposed to radical postmodern conception, criteria derived from positivism are not seen as completely wrong, but rather incomplete. As White (1994) argues,‘‘The growth of knowledge in public administration can be satisfied by interpretive and critical research as well as explanatory research. . . . [R]eflection on each mode of research is called for to discover what norms, rules, and values pertain to each. The norms and rules will constitute the method of each mode of research, while the values will indicate criteria by which to judge the truth of each type of knowledge’’ (p. 57). He further writes, ‘‘Practical reasoning is fundamentally a matter of interpretation and criticism. It is very much a political endeavor requiring the giving of reasons why one rule should be followed rather than another, or why one criterion should be met rather than another. The growth of knowledge in public administration is based on this type of argument’’(p. 57).
Nevertheless, the range of qualitative methods used in public administration studies is limited (mostly case studies) and the use of those methods lacks rigor as found in other disciplines such as
business and sociology (Brower, Abolafia, and Carr, 2000; Lowery and Evans, 2004; Perry and Kraemer, 1994). Lowery and Evans (2004) conclude that in articles published in major public administration journals,‘‘the distinction between positivist and interpretivist=constructivist paradigms is not well understood. A limited range of theoretical paradigms and research methods are employed.
The conventions that attend to qualitative research methods are rarely followed . . .’’(p. 312).
Aiming to improve qualitative methods in public administration research, Brower, Abolafia, and Carr, (2000, pp. 391–392) develop a useful assessment guideline: (1) authenticity, which requires authors to make their role visible in the interpretive process and to present in detail procedures used in data collection and provide thick, rich descriptions (copious use of natives’ words=behaviors, particulars of everyday life, and aspects of setting and surroundings); (2) plausibility, which requires authors to connect with the reader by legitimizing their research methods, using the first person plural pronoun, normalizing the atypical, smoothing contestablefindings, differentiatingfindings as a singular contribution, and building dramatic anticipation in describing research methods;
(3) criticality, which requires authors to create unique impressions about the subject, to stimulate readers to reexamine taken-for-granted assumptions (by deliberate reflection, recognition, and examination of competing views, imagination of new possibilities, or illumination of the researchers’surprise and differentness from natives), and to provide analysis of both the frontstage and the backstage (presenting both formal and informal activities and views from dominant or less powerful participants, accounting for both the bright and the dark sides, and integrating the differences in perspective); (4) adequacy of theorization, which requires a formally stated research question, appropriate research design, and sound analysis that relates to existing theories and uncovers subtleties in the data. It indicates that authors have to tease out nuances in the data and develop the full theoretical potential of data examples.
Before we conclude, we briefly point to several recent publications that employed thorough qualitative research methods. Frederickson and Frederickson (2006) study the federal implementa- tion of Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) in the context of hollow state, employing a qualitative, comparative case study research methodology and grounded theory analysis. They explain that ‘‘qualitative research techniques were chosen because GPRA is relatively new and because the body of extant research . . . is still relatively limited . . . there have simply not been enough aggregated quantitative data over enough years to sustain reliable generalizations based on statistical analysis’’ (p. 195). They suggest that the research approach fit the research questions surrounding‘‘the processes by which federal health care agencies, representing a diversity of policy tools and third-party service providers, either successfully or unsuccessfully develop performance measures and plans to collect data for those measures’’(p. 198). They further state that the use of cross-case analysis is ‘‘to expand the basis of information, to bolster the validity of and add confidence tofindings’’(p. 198), referring to the quality criteria proposed by Miles and Huberman (1994). With the thorough approach, Frederickson and Frederickson (2006) are able to create new theories and link the GRPA implementation with the level of third-party policy implementation, the nature and quality of network articulations, the characteristics of goals, the level of goal and policy agreement, the level of centralization of policy implementation, the level and character of client and stakeholder support, and professional identity.
Maynard-Moody and Musheno (2006), using storytelling and narrative, provide a thorough, stimulating, direct examination of the reality of street-level bureaucrats. The book is based on a substantial qualitative research: three years of fieldwork, 157 stories collected from 48 front-level workers at 5 research sites in 2 states. The book reports 36 stories from teachers, cops, and rehabilitation counselors, each of which was selected to illustrate significant theoretical points and to offer a vivid sense of street-level reality. Maynard-Moody and Musheno (2006) use the stories to address issues such as occupational identities, the nature of street-level work, organizational and social divisions among street-level workers, and normative decision making and discretion. The authors not only provide the details about their method in an appendix but also discuss, in a comprehensive manner, the strengths and weaknesses of story-based research.