Dr Brainerd Prince
Previously, in this column, we discussed the idea of the three buckets, red, yellow, and green, as an analogy and visual metaphor for the process of research. We focused on the red bucket as finding our central research question, and the green bucket focused on getting the solution to the research question. The reason for using these three colours is the allusion to traffic signals. The colour green can be seen as a sign of growth and a sign of solutions, as a sign that says ‘go’. This is opposed to red, which stops us in our tracks, makes us think, and makes us raise a question. The yellow is the one that gets us ready to move; we will come to it as the methodology of research, the lens through which we move forward.
The red bucket gave us the gap in the literature. It raised the question for us. If that is what the red bucket did, then the green bucket gives us the filling of the gap or the answer to the research question. The green bucket is the primary source from which we fill the gap or answer the research question by studying, analyzing, and gleaning from the object of research. With this, we come to the language of the object of research.
I have used the term ‘object’ here intentionally. The dominant aspect of the red bucket, or of raising the research question has a certain subjectivity. What I mean is that right at the beginning, the research question has its origin in the world of phenomena, out of the deeply subjective experiences of the researcher. And, of course, we moved from that to the world of texts and literature. And yet, it was this deep dissonance with things as they were in the real world that helped the researcher identify the question. The research question was not just a question in the literature, but it was also a question in the life of the researcher. But when we think of answers and solutions, I am convinced that there must be a certain objectivity concerning the solution. We must be very careful with solutions. Solutions, particularly research solutions, are powerful because they tend to become the norm or take on the status of truth.
The solutions that research produces are likely to direct the lives of people and the work produced by institutions. When one proposes a solution, one needs to be extremely aware of the significant responsibility that lies in proposing a solution. Therefore, I argue that the solution must be as objective as objective can be. Admittedly, there is nothing purely objective. Neither is there anything purely subjective. However, there can be a dominance of either one of them in a certain articulation. When we articulate the research question, we want it to echo the subjective leanings and mode of inquiry of the researcher. But when we articulate the solution, we want the solution to echo the objective realities that the research discovers.
The second reason for using the term object of research is that you get the term objective out of the object. The object of research becomes a goal to be achieved. It is not something that is strewn about or lies around that you go and pick up. That object of research, the solution, must be worked out. It is an objective that must be reached, arrived at, and accomplished. It demands hard work, scientific work, the ability to work with data, and the ability to make sure that the story of the data is captured well. It becomes the primary source from which our research gets its argument and solution.
What do we mean by a primary source? When we looked at the red bucket and moved into the world of scholarly text and literature, we were very careful to make sure that we did not stray from that, and that our sources were always academic. But the moment we talk about a primary source, anything and everything written about our object of research is a source of knowledge. Suppose you are researching something like genetically edited foods, and you are proposing that GE foods are a solution to the food security problem of our world, then not only the scholarly literature but also media articles, corporate literature, and all material related to GE foods become a primary source of research. The primary source refers to all the sources of knowledge on the object of research. It is captured in popular literature as well as in academic scholarly literature. All of that together forms the primary source. The primary source can be a person you want to study, a person's texts you want to study, a phenomenon in the world, or an event that you want to study and experiment with and collect data on it.
The fundamental premise is that the primary source must possess solutions to the question that has been raised. That, we can say, is probably the only prerequisite for something to become the primary source of a particular research project. The primary source possesses solutions.
This may seem easy to understand, but in practice it is counterintuitive. Let us go back to our initial story about the study of homeless children under the bridge. The researcher looks at homeless children under the bridge and wants to understand how to give them holistic well-being and health. And without much thought, he makes the homeless children under the bridge his object of research. And this happens again and again in the world of research. The source of the problem is taken to be the source of the solution. It is like saying you want to study how the patients in the hospital can be healthy, and then you go and study the patients in the hospital and collect their data to find out how they can be healthy. Well, if they were already healthy, which is your answer, the solution that you are looking for, then they would not be patients in a hospital in the first place.
There is something contradictory that is going on here. However, most research projects end up studying the phenomenon that raised the question for them as the object of research. There is some value in doing this; especially if the object of research is meant to clarify the question or shed more details on the problem itself. And yet, that sort of research will leave the project with a tantalizing ending. This is because identifying and articulating the gap from different perspectives and understanding the gap, is all still a part of the red bucket. We do want to close the loop with solutions.
Thus, the green bucket must provide solutions. Therefore, for a source to be a primary source of a research project, it must provide solutions. Let us return to our example of homeless children under the bridge .If we are to find a solution for homeless children under the bridge in an urban landscape, we need to look hard for those urban initiatives where homeless children have been successfully rehabilitated and given a sense of well-being. It is that process where homeless children have been housed that needs to be studied in order to answer our question. That is the solution. And that solution or object of research need not come from the same city where the problem was, but from anywhere in the world. It can come from any urban space where this problem of homeless children has been resolved. As long as there is evidence of homeless children being rehabilitated, that space or place becomes eligible to be a primary source for this research. However, it must be apple to apple. What I mean by that is if the research question is about homeless children, then the object of research must be about homeless children. It cannot be about orphans. It cannot be about fostering.
Thus, we must ensure that the primary source is appropriate and relevant to the research question. And that it resonates with the quest. That it has solutions to the research question. All of these things ensure that the primary source is appropriate for that particular research project.
The green bucket is the study of the primary source. It is to build a hypothesis and then to do research on that primary source, collect data, and evidence to effectively answer the research question that was raised. In the next article, we will talk about designing a hypothesis from the object of research.
Dr Brainerd Prince is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Thinking, Language, and Communication (CTLC) at Plaksha University, Mohali.
