Form and Value of Diversity in Human Science Research

This presentation explicates the theme by placing the researcher in relation to forms of diversity evidenced in human science research. The human participant, who the researcher depends upon for fulfilling the researcher’s interest, co-creates the research context and process with the researcher, often bringing into and projecting upon the researcher personal attributes of the participant. Individual differences (characteristics of participants) provides an inherent progenitor of diversity the researcher must embrace in any form of human science research. Human inquiry using more than one researcher presents the counterpart and complement to reveal a second form of diversity issues. The sociocultural background of participants and researchers constitute a third form of diversity to be understood in conducting human science research. Compounding and often derived from basic characteristics of both participants and researchers are their perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs that bring multiple perspectives to the research context, leading to special emphases in data processing, and presentation and interpetation of findings. Multiple perspectives is a central part of all general theories of systems, and this construct of perspectivisim provides a fourth form of diversity. Following from these forms of diversity, a meta analysis of a body of human oriented empirical research reports of the same phenomenon would provide yet another form of diversity, in that each report could potentially contribute a side of the phenomenon, like the facets of a jewel, to the fuller and comprehensive and holistic description of the phenomenon. The paper concludes with an appraisal of the value of convergent advantage, rather than discursive elimination, of the forms of diversity in advancing methodology for human science.

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