Insights from other disciplines
The above link is to a really thought provoking post from Erika Hall at Mule Design Studio. She writes from a design perspective, but there is a lot of transferrable learning for social researchers in her writing.
The quote below is particularly striking:
“Maintaining a research mindset means realizing that bias is rampant, certainty is an illusion, and any answer has a short shelf life. A good question is far more valuable in the long run. And you can’t ask good questions — meaning you can’t learn — until you admit you don’t have the answers.”
Social researchers can draw two things from this. First, when understanding the social world in all its complexity, any insights we gain can only be temporary, and contextual to time, place and culture. Second, asking the right questions is as important as finding the right answers — taking the time to formulate the right research questions is never wasted.
