The Field of Action Research

       The scientific way of life is governed by three broad classes of interacting motives: curiosity, the desire to know what is going on when one's back is turned, where one's vision cannot easily reach, or where a situation is to complex for clear viewing; practicality, the desire that the results of one's labors, search, and inquiry should 'make a difference', and intrinsic orderliness, the desire that the masses of accumulated data be reduced to a comprehensible order and that the complexities which have been unraveled in the satisfaction of one's curiosity be not again obscured by the imposition upon the data of an arbitrary order.

        There are many consequences of the recognition of the motivation of the scientist. One can, for example, readily derive therefrom an appreciation of the importance which the scientist attaches to the principle of parsimony and one can discern in these terms many important implications for the requisites of a philosophy of science.

        When seen in the light of these interacting motives, the great controversies which have raged over pure vs, applied science obscure the real problem. Reduced to the level of the functioning scientist, the basic question is not one of pure vs, applied science, but rather of the degree to which the scientist's diverse needs are satisfied. The so-called 'pure scientist' is not uncorcerned with the broader systematic aspects of his results, nor is the 'applied scientist, uncorcerned with the broader systematic  aspects of his work. It is true, of course, that scientific techniques may be adapted to non-scientific practical purposes, but if the sole concern is with the practical purposes and not at all with exploring the unknown or contributing to the siystematization of knowledge, then the adapter may be a high grade technologist, but he is not a scientist, 'pure' or 'applied'. A physician, for example, does not become a scientist merely by doing urine analysis.

        The question of practicality draws attention, however, to an important aspect of the contemporary scientific world. One can arrive at a recognition of two broad approaches to scientific inquiry. The first may be characterized as descriptive. The scientist, when he follows this approach, is concerned with describing the world as it is and with discovering correlated terms. He is little concerned with the causes or determining conditions of events, indeed he may even be skeptical about the existence of 'causes'. His labors are not without practical signifikance. It is after all in the world as it is that we must act, and full familiarity with the arens of action help us to act less blindly. It is true that the occasions for making use of the knowledge acquired by purely descriptive research are not always immediately apparent; and, in a changing world, some of the accumulated knowledge may have lost its partinence by the time the occasion for action arises. The main point is that this approach is not by itself sufficient for the scientist whose chief concerns are geared towards changing the world as it is while at the same time contributing to the acquisition and ordering of human knowledge.

         The second broad approach may be characterized as the conditional. The scientist, when he adheres to this approach, is primarily concerned with the determining conditions of events. He is not equally satisfied with the discovery of all varieties of correlationships. He want to discover a special kind of correlation, the causal or, more properly, the conditional variety. Toward this end, he must usually do something more than merely to describe.

         Conditional relationships may sometimes be inferred from purely descriptive data, but the method of choice in the conditional approach is the actual manipulation of circumstances and the observation of the resultant changes. It is with these considerations in mind that one can, perhaps, best understand the field of action research. It is a field which developed to satisfy the needs of the socio-political individual who recognizes that, in science, he can find the mos reliable guide to effective actiom, and the needs of the scientist who wants his labors to be of maximal social utility as well as of theoretical significance.

         Offhand it may seem that the problems of action research are quite simple; science merely turns its weapons in a new direction. Actually the case is quite different, Not only does the action researcher face all of the difficulties which confront the scientist in his laboratory, but an entirely new set of difficulties, extraneous to fact-finding per se, enter the picture.

        Consider the case of the physical sciences. Ordinarily the scientist's job comes to an end, as far as society is concerned, when he has made some tecnological advance or some socially scientific discovery. It is up to society to make use of this development. If it fails to do so, the scientist may perhaps react with a sense of personal futility, but he still considers that his job has been done; he does not ordinarily suppose that it part of his job to see to it that the results of his labors are applied.

        Group leader who sincerely desired to carry out the role assigned him, found himself at a loss as to how to go about it. All the training of these group workers predisposed them to take a 'non-directive' role, helping their goups to channel and articulate their interests, but never actually bringing up a topic in which the gru\oup was not already interested. It required several months of effort by an experienced group worker on the CCI staff to develop in the 'attention' group leaders a clear understanding of what they were supposed to do, a real interest in doing it, and an ability to do it in the midst of the innumerable distractions involved in group work with active and uninhibited youngsters. Unfortunately by the time this was accomplished the experiment was nearly over, so that most of the 'attention' gropus did not actually have their attention called to their mixed ethnic composition more than two or three in any clear-cut fashion.

         The situation demanded extremely precise and sensitive measurement techniques in order to gauge the effects of what little the group leaders had accomplished. Unfortunately during the experiment it became clear that the measurements techniques we were using were not capable or registering accurately slight changes in degree of prejudice, especially among the rather unprejudeiced chidren who formed the great majority of our subjects. A simple verbal test of prejudice and an elaborate projective test were devised to meet this need, but by the time they were ready for use the recreation center had closed for the summer. A complicated and expensive post-experimental testing program had to be added to the original experimental design.

          It is still too early to tell whether these additional efforts will prove sufficient to provide an adequate test of the hypothesis that the experiment was intended will be necessary. However, it is clear by now that the hyphotesis can be tested experimentally, and it seems very doubtful that it could be tested adequately in any other fashion.