The Right Circumstances for Multidisciplinary Research多学科研究的合适的情况下.docVIP

The Right Circumstances for Multidisciplinary Research “Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them”( Surowiecki ,2004, p.xiii) Any review of the research literature will demonstrate the increasing incidence of group research and now, increasingly, multi-disciplinary research. Experience shows that most group activity is fraught with difficulty. In academia, team assignments, deemed important learning activities to prepare students for the “real world” promote endless discussions on structuring the groups and assisting students with conflict resolution. Student course work and uni or intradisciplinary research groups have relatively homogeneous membership yet require careful organization and management. One admirable motivation behind multidisciplinary research is the aim to bring experts from divergent disciplines and perceptions together to address a research question from all angles. The disciplines represented within health and the social sciences, and those related through the ‘determinants of health’ are many. They represent not only an hierarchy of professions but also an hierarchy of research methodologies. Is it reasonable to expect truly diverse research teams to function smoothly? Students and researchers using experiential research methods seek to decrease the marginalization of their research participants through reflexive practices. Within multidisciplinary research groups experiential researchers will might find themselves as part of an internal marginalized group, both by discipline and methodology. Should they join multidisciplinary research teams to provide true diversity or are the risks too high? Many authors discuss the “circumstances” which hinder and support multidisciplinary research groups but few recognize that the internal experience of this type of research team is similar to that of many researcher/participant situations, where dominant paradigms of researc