The Nature of Inquiry

There are numerous forms of inquiry and evidence that people rely on to make inferences, establish practice, modify behavior, and persuade others, including the following:

1. Intuition can be used to reach a conclusion. One of the limitations of intuition is that it is based on a private process that does not allow others to evaluate the evidence or the process upon which the inference was made.
2. Experience provides important information. Persons trust their senses and their experiences. "If I have (not) experienced something, then it must (not) be true!" Experiential knowledge has limitations that include the sample of experiences to which people have been exposed, and the limitations of the senses including processing sensory information, and accurately recalling the information.
3. Observation contains information that includes the experiences, inferences, behaviors, and verbal representations of others as well as self. Casual observations contain limitations imposed by unrepresentative samples, biases of perception and attention, imprecise conceptual frameworks, and difficulty in making clear causal statements about why a behavior occurred.
4. Dogma, authority, and opinion of experts capture a basis of inferences that refer to, for example, religious, political, and social knowledge bases that determine and influence belief systems and inferences (e.g., "It's true because the Bible [or the President or an expert] says so").
5. Consensus bases inferences on what others generally think or are believed to think. A limitation of consensus (as with dogma, authority, and opinion of experts) is that consensus groups may have biases in perception and frameworks of reasoning.
6. Logic presumes that if one can reason correctly (accurately), then valid conclusions will be reached. The validity of reasoning by logic is limited by the nature of the premise. Although sound logic may contribute to good research, it is not the same as research.

There are different formal means through which information can be accumulated and analyzed. For example, philanthropy can be analyzed from the following paradigmatic perspectives: philosophical, historical, economic, literary, dramaturgical, educational, linguistic, or psychological. Each of these paradigms uses its own methods, language, conceptual frameworks, and tools. Each also contributes to the overall understanding of a phenomenon. Thus, research using paradigms of traditional science are not better than other modes of inquiry; rather they are better viewed as complementing other methods of inquiry.

The scientific method itself is a collection of different paradigms. For example, eating would be approached with very different methods, tools, and conceptual perspectives by an anthropologist, sociologist, physiological psychologist, social psychologist, biochemist, and neurologist. Colloquially, scientific research is assumed to describe the process of collecting data. However, people have always collected information (data) through observation and experience, and they have used consensus, dogma, logic, and intuition to make inferences about highly significant and relevant issues (e.g., disease, earthquakes, kindness). Research is distinguished from casual observation and other forms of inquiry by how its methods provide information that can meaningfully contribute to an understanding of phenomena by providing a basis for deductions and generalizations. Research aspires to be empirical (i.e., rely on observable events), to conduct information gathering according to a set of procedural rules (i.e., to be systematic), to control for alternative explanations, to be public and open to scrutiny (i.e., the methods are available for critical evaluation), and to be amoral or value free (i.e., acknowledge and attempt to overcome biases, be objective). Thus, research is the systematic collection and synthesis of empirical information that supports inferences or conclusions.

Quantitative approaches to scientific research emphasize testing hypotheses deduced from broad, abstract theories. Hypotheses traditionally are used to test the robustness and adequacy of theories across diverse sets of examples. Qualitative approaches to research emphasize the interpretation of in-depth meaning (e.g., how, why) that is available from one or multiple sources that may be purposively selected and studied.

In addition to its methods, the effectiveness and meaningfulness of scientific research is tied to its theoretical context (See Figure 1). Thus, it is a myth that the purpose of research is to collect data merely for its own sake. Research is better viewed as the collection of data in the service of theory.