Integrating critical realist and feminist methodologies: ethical and analytical dilemmas

Abstract

This paper reflects on research carried out with a group of women receiving intensive family support aimed at addressing the cause of their family’s ‘anti-social behaviour’. The methodological approach to the research was underpinned by the philosophical principles of critical realism. It was also informed by the ethical and political concerns of feminist scholarship. The paper reports on the potential points of tension that arise between feminism and critical realism in empirical research. In particular, attention is centred on the process of trying to marry approaches which stress the central role of participants’ knowledge, particularly those who are ‘labelled’ and whose voices are not readily heard, with the principle that some accounts of ‘reality’ are better than others.

Keywords:

• critical realism
• feminist research
• data analysis
• ethics

Notes

1. In the field of disability studies, Danieli and Woodhams (2007) raise a similar concern when they ask whether the aim of emancipatory research should be to provide ‘accurate accounts’ that honour the views of disabled people as valid or to produce research which supports the social model of disability but which may reflect the researchers views rather than those of the researched.

2. This is also recognised in work associated with post-modernism, post-structuralism within hermeneutic and interpretive traditions.

3. A discussion of my ‘findings’ is published elsewhere (Parr, 2011).