The Politics of Research Design: A Reply to Mornell

Abstract

Researchers seldom write about the politics of research. Yet it is obvious that research is often initiated in the hope that it will support the position advocated by the Institution or the research administrator funding and supervising the project. Social research is an important tool for the creation of new issues and new understanding and an important source of evidence for policy debates. In addition to the normal taboos which keep private the shop talk of any profession, many of the researchers who understand the politics of the process must also rely on continued access to funds gained through the process to continue their work. Many others are so absorbed in their research specialities that they pay little attention to the question of how the research agenda is formed. There is another set of constraints on those who participate in the debates within the funding agencies, as I did during the preparation of the school desegregation research design. In exchange for full participation in the internal debates and access to the discussions and decisions, the understanding of all participants is that the policy discussions are confidential. This is vital to a relatively free and open discussion, and violating it simply means exclusion from the real decision-making process. Although I kept extensive notes and files on the effort to launch a national study of many aspects of the desegregation process, I had not intended to write on the subject. Publication of Eugene Mornell's account, however, exposes one side of a bureaucratic battle over the RAND study and releases selected fragments of the internal documents. My conviction that Mornell has inaccurately described both the