Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- New Introduction
- Acknowledgement
- Note on Numbers
- Introduction to the Original Edition
- 1 Social Origins
- 2 ‘A Friend a Day Keeps the Doctor Away’: Social Support and Health
- 3 Sickness in Salonica and Other Stories
- 4 Eve in the Garden of Health Research
- 5 A Bite of the Apple
- 6 Who’s Afraid of the Randomized Controlled Trial?
- 7 ‘One of Mummy’s Ladies’
- 8 Four Women
- 9 ‘Real’ Results
- 10 Women at Risk
- 11 The Poverty of Research
- 12 Models of Knowing and Understanding
- Appendix I Study Guidelines
- Appendix II Publications from the Social Support and Pregnancy Outcome Study
- Notes
- References
- Index
4 - Eve in the Garden of Health Research
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 April 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- New Introduction
- Acknowledgement
- Note on Numbers
- Introduction to the Original Edition
- 1 Social Origins
- 2 ‘A Friend a Day Keeps the Doctor Away’: Social Support and Health
- 3 Sickness in Salonica and Other Stories
- 4 Eve in the Garden of Health Research
- 5 A Bite of the Apple
- 6 Who’s Afraid of the Randomized Controlled Trial?
- 7 ‘One of Mummy’s Ladies’
- 8 Four Women
- 9 ‘Real’ Results
- 10 Women at Risk
- 11 The Poverty of Research
- 12 Models of Knowing and Understanding
- Appendix I Study Guidelines
- Appendix II Publications from the Social Support and Pregnancy Outcome Study
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
The lack of independence of social science research from current beliefs and valuations in the surrounding society is illustrated dramatically by the fact that it rarely blazes the way towards new perspectives. (Myrdal 1969: 47)
The lives of most social researchers are dominated by the recurrent need to produce research proposals. This is particularly so for contract researchers – people who must raise their own salaries in addition to the direct costs of the research. Between 1976 and 1984 contract research employment in English universities increased by 76 per cent. In 1982, when the first proposals for the study described in this book were being written, contract researchers made up a quarter of the UK academic workforce. Half of those surveyed in a 1984 study had no job to go to at the end of their current contract, and the majority were on contracts of less than three years (Advisory Board for the Research Councils 1989). As a report on the terms and conditions of social research funding in Britain put it in 1980:
Research workers, like anyone else, need to live, enjoy at least the possibility of security of employment without frequent moves, and over time look for career advancement in terms of responsibilities and rewards. Competent researchers will have a professional approach to their work, which depends on the possibility of commitment to research and accumulation of skills and experience. The general pattern of research funding does little to support research careers in this sense. It is evident that single-project grants, without continuity of institutional base, do not promote security, and this is a characteristic mode of research funding. (Social Research Association 1980: 26)
In addition to their limited-contract employment, all researchers operate within what Basil Bernstein (1984) has called a ‘culture of impermanence’. This imposes isolation from other researchers and academic staff, and a unique rhythm, sequence and deadlines resulting from the funding process.
For contract researchers, a research proposal is essentially a job application: failure of the proposal to secure funding means unemployment. For researchers whose contracts do not require the continual re-financing of their own jobs, the research proposal plays an important role as professional justification: the measure of a ‘good’ researcher is the number of research proposals successfully funded; or, to put it another way, the ‘failure’ to raise money is an easy invitation to professional criticism.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Social Support and Motherhood (Reissue)The Natural History of a Research Project, pp. 86 - 106Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2018