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Lotte Bailyn
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From:
Quality and Quantity, II (1977) 97 -117 97
C> Elsevier Scientific Publi'ihing Company, Amsterdam - Printed in The Setherlands
LOTTE BAILYN
Associate Professor of Organi!ational Psychology and Management, Sloan
School of Management, .ti.I. T.
researcher is truly aware of the vagaries of this evolution, and this inner
personal history is often forgotten as soon as the results reach print.
But if we do not know how the process actualJy works, it is not pos-
sible to see what it implies.
For this reason, I want to begin this paper by presenting a brief per-
sonal history in research. It will, I hope, illustrate not merely how
initial beliefs and commitments guide the process of research. but also
how empirical findings influence and shape the evolving conceptions of
the researcher. Moreover, though it necessarily is a very specific story
dealing with one researcher's attempt to understand one phenomenon,
we will be able to use it later to exemplify some of the analytic strate-
gies discussed in the main part of this paper.
The story begins in England. in 1969, when the writer had an op-
portunity to work with Robert and Rhona Rapoport in their survey of
university graduates in Britain. a study that served as the empirical part
of a book, Sex, Career, and Family (Fogarty et al.. 1971 ). Their data
consisted of responses to a rather lengthy questionnaire on many
aspects of people's careers and family situations. ~ty own work in those
materials centered on the questionnaires of .a subset of some ~00
women eight years after their graduat!on from university and another
set of responses from their husbands. In 1l1is subsample. therefcrre. anal-
ysis by couples was possible. Since most previous research in the area
had included only second-hand information about spouses, this aspect
of the data was partk11larly appealing.
I had previously sp~culated about the problems of professional
women (Bailyn, 1965). but haJ not had an opportunity to work with
empirical data that dealt with the issues of work and family. That ear-
lier paper nevertheless expressed the assumptions with which I
approached the English data: I was in favor of married women having
ca"reers if they chose to do so. and though I realized that there were
impediments in their way, I felt that restricting their desire to work
would be more harmful to them and to their families than following
this desirl.' would be. It was with some alarm, therefore. that I viewed
an early finding showing that couples in which the wife was working
were less happy and more dissatisfied with their lives than those in
which the wife stayed home.
My first reaction was to try to disprove the finding. Hoping that I
had stumbled on a chance! assnciation, I used different definitions of
99
JO)
The example is coming to an end, even though the story is not over.
The M.I.T. data made it possible to extend the work in another direc-
tion: to raise the question of the implications of accommodation not
only for men's families but also for their work. Preliminary analysis on
this point indicated that in the technical occupations in which these
men were involved, what is good for their families may be problematic
for their work (Bailyn, in press). New research, therefore, must concen-
trate on the way family needs and work requirements interact with
each other in the personal and career development of men and women
(6). New data and another cognitive research phase are needed.
By presenting this example I hope I have been able to convey some-
thing of the flexibility in the relation between ideas and data that
makes research a cognitive rather than simply a validating process. The
more fluid the procedures, the more continuously responsive to sur-
prises, nuances, and anomalies they are. the more likely will the result
be a new formulation. I will come back to this example whenever pos-
sible in the subsequent pages, where I try to specify the analytic strate-
gies that aUow one to maximize the cognitive value of empirical data.
can be established between the two planes, the better the research.
Some links, of course, must exist or there would be no empirical
research at all. "Theorizing" occurs all within the conceptual plane, and
an analysis that proceeds only at that level is not an empirical investiga-
tion. At the other extreme, "empiricism .. refers to manipulations that
stay entirely within the empirical plane. Critics who accuse the empiri-
cal social sciences of doing nothing l:JUt proving the obvious ha\'e
usually limited their vision to the empirical plane and neglected to con-
sider the links between it and the conceptual one.
It is the continuous interplay between concepts and data that per-
haps more than anything else distinguishes research as a cognitive
process from research as a \"alidating process. In the typical validating
study there is onl} one foray from the conceptual to the empirical
plane: to select the potentially validating data and assess its significance.
This is obviously an important step, but it does not describe the total
research effort, which needs its cognitive phases as well. And these
require many more links between the two planes.
Specific strategies of data analysis may be developed from the appli-
cation of these two principles. Such strategies vary according to the
phases of the research, and thus it is necessary to distinguish the essen-
tial task of each research stage.
The function of the collection phase is to generate the kind of data
that will permit research to proceed in a cognitive fashion. During data
compilation - which is perhaps the most creative phase - the collected
data is transformed in such a way that it both guides and reflects the
evolving conceptions of the analyst. The personal history given above
was concentrated in this stage. It is here that conceptually key variables.
such as the career orientations of the wives in the example given, are
defined; it is here, also, that standard techniques of data reduction may
find their place. The stage of data presemation is crucial because the:
vaJidation of the whole process often resides Jess within one particul:ir
study than in its fit with the shared conceptual understanding of other
researchers concerned with similar problems [ 7]. Research results must
be presented in a way that allows them to be assessed in the context of
an evol\'ing consensus.
These steps are obviously not strictly sequential. First drafts. for
instance, are often more valuable for compil:ition than for presentation.
and even dat:i collection can, in certain designs. be intertwined with
data compilation. But their essential functions are distinct. and thus it
is fruitful to examine them separJtely when considering the implica-
tions of the principles of research as a cognitive process.
103
TABLE 1
Implications for data 1n1lysis
-----
(1,1)
----
(1,2)
- ----- - . . -- -- - ---
. (1,3)
I am ~rateful to Lance K. lleiko for a comment which led to an imrrovcment in the formal or this Table.
105
tially great cognitive yield: data that will help one understand the
process by which an expected association comes about: and data that
will allow one to test possible explanations for negative results. To con-
tinue with the Fry example: If the hypothesis is confirmed, one would
then want to know why a learning environment that fits a person's
learning style is more effective, for there are various possible explana-
tions. Is it because one feels more at ease in such an environment, or
feels freer to experiment? Or does it require less time and effort to
adjust to and hence leaves more for actual learning? Conversely. what
might account for disconfirmation of the hypothesis? Perhaps the
environment is not accurately perceived; or maybe one had expected a
non-congruent learning environment and had already made anticipatory
adjustments which then precluded one's taking advantage of the con-
gruence actually found. In both cases, people's reactions to their
experie11ces, though not directly related to the main hypothesis, are
obviously relevant. In particular. questions about the subjects' percep-
tions of the environment in which they find themselves and their evalu-
ation of their experiences in it, might provide appropriate surplus data.
Other studies. of course, deal centrally with people's perceptions and
experiences. In such cases the crucial surplus data might involve no
more than standard demographic information to indicate membership
in certain social groups. Or. if the design allows for greater sophistica-
tion, the surplus data might deal directly with environmental character-
istics. Every research problem, naturally. will provide its own specific
guidelines. But the general principle is to try to collect data on classes
of variables that are not central in the initial conceptualization of the
problem, so that new interpretations (both of expected and of unex-
pected findings) can be formulated and subjected to empirical test.
TABLE II
Mean independence scores by maternal employment and sex
Mother
TABLE Ill
Enginecn' alien:ation from work by presrnt position and people-orientation
Present position of initial staff engineers Value pbc:ed on worki~ with people
Low
The figures in the table reprrsc:nt the perc:cnt:i11e in each cell who :ire :ilicn:atcd from work: the
~who fall at the Low end of an lnd:-x of \fork Involvement.
109
Notes
I am using the word ..data" in two senses: first, as a singular collective noun to
refer to the totality of av:iilable emrirical information; :inu second, in its more
usual sense, to refer to specific results from a stuuy, in which case it takes the
plural form.
2 Such a process is obviously possibk with all kinds of d:ita. In the social sciences
it has been most uplicitly recognized by advocates of qualitative resc:in.:h (e.g.
Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Becker. 1958). But Poly:i's (1954) distinction
betW\.'Cn demonstrative :mu plausible reasoning, which :ipplic:s to mathematii:s,
is similar; and just recently an appeal for the collection of data for more than
validation - for ..clo:K observation of effects the hypothesis under test sa)'S
nothin& about" (p. 122) - has come from within ..scientific psychology" itsc:lf
(Cronbach, 1975).
115
3 The fact that empirical research and social theory are mutually dependent on
each other was already documented by Merton ( 1949) almost thirty years ago.
4 A classic exception is Hammond (1964). More recently, contributors to the
Festschrift to Herman Wold (Dalenius et al., 1970), were asked to report your
personal experience of the research process and how new knowledge is created
in the process" {p. 18). In the present context the chapter by Johan Galtung,
..On the Structure of Creativity" (1970, pp. 43-61), is particularly relevant.
S The Conversational Mode Survey Analysis Program developed by L. Hawkins
of Survey Analysis Ltd., London.
6 Members of the Organization Studies Group at M.l.T., particularly Edgar H.
Schein, John Van Maanen, and myself, are currently pursuing some of the theo-
retical implications of such an interactive view of careers.
7 This view, though not that expressed in standard texts on research methods
(see, e.g., Kerlinger, 1973), is gaining currency in discussions of the sociology of
science (e.~. Mitroff and Mason, 1974; Kuhn, 1970).
8 Sometimes what is pleasing will be empirical corroboration of an intuitively or
theoretically ''obvious" point; at other timH one is most please~ by a concep
tually clear interpretation of an unexpected or contradictory finding. The crite
ria of closure actually used in any given case will depend, of course, on the par
ticular problem and researcher involved.
9 The concept of "relative deprivation", for instance, seems to have evolved in
this way (Stouffer et al., 1949).
10 The technique of path analysis forces researchers to provide a very specific
structure of their variables, one which also includes the causal links among the
variables. Path analysis, therefore, would seem to be uniquely suited to effect
this strategy. It does not, however, fit some of the other specifications
described in this paper - particularly not those relatin~ to cognitive complexity
of data during compilation (I,:?). It probably is more useful, therefore. in a
validating than in a cognitive research phase. Further. it iii 1:ot alwa~s possible
to predetermine cau53l links, though if data collection is guided by a clear struc-
ture of the variables involved in the research, the likelihood of accurately speci-
fying these links is grieatly increased.
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