Methods in transdisciplinary research - Project JK

Exposé - Research project about methods of transdisciplinary research in the field of sustainability science on the example of the method interview

Problem Statement:

In the last years a lot of problems relevant for society, called the “Grand challenges” (Reid et al., 2010) evolved. Jürgen Mittelstraß states for solving this problems we need knowledge, for which the creation of it goes beyond the academic system consisting of specialized disciplines. He says: „Hier tun uns die Probleme schon lange nicht mehr den Gefallen, sich selbst fachlich oder disziplinär zu definieren. Nur im Zusammengehen unterschiedlicher wissenschaftlicher wie nicht-wissenschaftlicher, z.B. politischer Kompetenzen (...) werden diese Probleme lösbar. (Mittelstraß, 2010: 2)”

There is  a call for solution-oriented and integrated research processes in order to gain broad knowledge. One research modus, which can be seen as solution-oriented and integrative is transdisciplinary research[1].

Reid et al (2010) describe transdisciplinary research as a creating form of research: “die durch eine starke Verankerung von Wissenschaft in der Gesellschaft ein höheres Leistungspotenzial mit Blick auf die ‚Grand Challenges‘ unserer Zeit zu generieren sucht“. The terms inter- and transdisciplinarity where first mentioned in a debate about problems in teaching and research in the 1970´s by Jean Piaget and Erich Jantsch (Vilsmaier & Lang, 2014: 94) In sustainability science the debate emerged in the 1990´s and several definitions were found. They all have in common that transdisciplinarity is solution-oriented and supports sustainable development. (vgl. Vilsmaier & Lang, 2014: 97-99). Therefore the integration of different knowledge forms, for example system knowledge, goal knowledge and transformation knowledge, plays an important role (Mittelstraß, 1996; Hirsch Hadorn, 2006: 33). The „Zurich Definition of Transdiscipliarity“ mentions aspects of this form of research (vgl. Vilsmaier & Lang, 2014: 99): Transdisciplinarity is a form of research where several actors from inside and outside academia try to find common solutions for problems. The academic actors have different disciplinary backgrounds and practitioners are involved as well.

The process of transdisciplinary research consist of three phases: 1.  Problem identification and structuring, 2. Common generation of solution-oriented knowledge and  3. re-integration and application of gained knowledge (vgl. Lang et al. 2012; Hirsch Hadorn 2006). Several definitions of transdisciplinarity are excisting and transdisciplinary research is increasing, because a potential to find solutions for the Grand Challenges in transdisciplinary projects is seen.

The development of this new form of research brings several questions on the agenda, for example about the role of research in society and the methods used in transdisciplinary projects.  It can be questioned which challenges will be faced in research as well as for methods. Processes of knowledge creation will be in focus, because especially this is new in this form of research.

Further discussion of transdisciplinary methods is urgently needed because even if there is steadily increasing research in the field of transdisciplinary there is no joint research framework and no clearly defined set of methods exists (Brandt et al. 2013). As Brandt et al. formulate (2013) this disables scientific communication and the exchange of knowledge between different disciplines. Matthias Bergmann and other researchers identify reasons for further development of the terminology as follows:

„Besides developing coherent terminologies and research frameworks, transdisciplinarity requires both the integration of different disciplinary methods (Bergmann, 2010) and the development of novel research methods to enable efficient and effective learning processes at the science-society interface (Bergmann and Schramm, 2008; Lawrence and Despres, 2004).“

According to Brandt et al (2013) it would be profitable to consistently apply research methods to enable reproducible approaches in projects and communication between different projects. In this research project it will be examined how disciplinary developed methods can be applied to a transdisciplinary setting on the example of the method interview and which tpotential that offers as well as how reproducible methods can be developed. The interview is especially interesting when the question comes up: “How to interview my partner?” The different actors involved in transdisciplinary projects do not only use interviews in order to gain data, but also to have mutual communication and dialogues. In several ways the interview partners are equal  and the relationship plays a role in communication processes. This is why it is very interesting if and how the method Interview can be used in a transdisciplinary setting for example for communication between practitioners and academic actors.

Research Question: How can the disciplinary developed method “Interview” be used in a transdisciplinary setting, where partners communicate mutually?

Sub-Questions:

1. How can the method interview be used in transdisciplinary projects as an instrument to mediate between researchers and practitioners?
2. Which potentials does the method interview have for the knowledge integration in transdisciplinary research projects?
3. Which challenges do researchers face, when they adapt the method interview in a transdisciplinary setting?
4. Is there a need to develop a new method instead of the classical interview?

Goal of research: The goal of my project is to research how methods established in a disciplinary context can be adapted in order to make them useful for knowledge integration in transdisciplinary projects. I will illustrate this on the example of the method interview (both qualitative and quantitiative).

Methods:

In a first step I will make a literature review and Big Data Analysis with a mix of a quantitative statistical analyses and a qualitative content analysis following the approach of Newig & Fritsch (2009), Brandt et al (2013) and Luederitz et al (2016). I gain articles via the database scopus with a searchstring, which includes the terms transdisci*, interdisci*, “sustainability science”, “mode 2”, “postnormal”, stakeholder*, collaborat* and participat*.[2] I will analyse aproximately 1500 papers first statistically. For this I will do a big data anaysis with digital and computational methods of humanities. First I will export my corpus[3] to Zotero, which is a bibliographic management tool and helpful for working with the metadata of the papers. Zotero will help to associate content with bibliographic entries. While working with my corpus I will check the dispersion of the words in the texts as well as the stemmings and will count the words of all papers in general. Than I will use the metadata of the texts for example to examine the word use of different authors or to show how words were distrubuted over time (year published). I will create linear models and compare the word use between different years the papers were published. I will also identify features and entities of the texts and create N-grams. After that I will model the colocates in a  co-occurence network and will also create histograms of the concected components. Than I will begin to reconceptualize the text as a non-linear phenomenon in latent semantic analysis, which hast he goal to find concepts. To sum up I will do corpus analysis, topic modelling and work with networks as a visualization tool for example for bibliographic metadata or to show the relations of features of the texts. I will analyse the indegree, outdegree, betweeness and closeness of this networks.

In a second step I might make a full content analysis of selected papers using a coding scheme.

The following hypotheses might be tested:

1. With the development of the field of transdisciplinary research in sustainability science new methods are developed.
2. In transdisciplinary research in sustainability science new interview forms are developed.
3. Transdisciplinary research can benefit from the interview method.
4. Using the method interview, developed in a disciplinary context, in transdisciplinary projects encounters problems and challenges.
5. In the field of transdisciplinary research in sustainability science new interview forms are necessary.
6. The method interview can contribute to knowledge integration in transdisciplinary projects.
7. The method interview can serve as an instrument for mediation between scientists from different disciplines and actors outside of academia.

My goal is to give a broad overview about the research field of transdisciplinary methods in sustainability science and to outline future challenges of it. I will work on this research question in the project CCP – „Complexity or control? Paradigms for sustainable development“, where I will research how the method interview was or can be used in the field of transdisciplinary research as well as which potential and challenges this inherents. It might also be the case that I will develop a new method, which implies the mutual communication process.

Structure

1 Introduction

1.1 Problem statement

1.2 Research questions

1.3 Research design

1.4 Overview about the structure of the thesis

2 Theoretical Framework

      2.1 The concept of transdisciplinarity

2.1.1 Development and definition of transdisciplinarity

            2.1.2 ISOE model

            2.1.3 Principles of transdisciplinarity

            2.1.1 Methods of transdisciplinary research 

      2.2 Interview

            2.2.1 Characteristics of Interviews

            2.2.2 Qualitative Interviews

            2.2.3 Quantitative Interviews

      2.3 Literature Review and Big Data Analysis

            2.3.1 Methods

            2.3.2 Results

            2.3.3 Discussion

            2.3.4 Conclusion

3 Empirical part

      3.1 Project – Complexity or Control? Paradigms for sustainable development

      3.2 Research design

            3.2.1 Methods

            3.2.2 Data and Data-analysis

            3.2.3 Reliability and validility

            3.3.3 Role of the researcher

4 Results

5 Discussion

6 Conclusion

Literature

Appendix

Work Schedule

1. Text collection and literature review: April 2016
2. Big data Analysis May-June 2016
3. Empirical analysis in the project CCP Juli-September 2016
4. Writing of the thesis October-December 2016

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