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Jeanne Daly

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In the 1998 issue of the Annual Review of Health Social Sciences we focused on research methodology. This 1999 issue was intended to concentrate on issues related to research funding. After all, if our research is not funded, it brings us little comfort to know that we have excellent research methods to apply to a variety of health issues. Unfortunately, only one paper submitted addressed such issues. Advice from the editorial board was that there was a reluctance to discuss the problems which health social scientists encounter when applying for research funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) or the Australian Research Council (ARC). The benefit we do draw from these funding sources could be compromised for an individual researcher who makes public a sense of disquiet about the processes of funding.

There has been reason for disquiet in 1999. Submitting a proposal to the ARC was likened to taking a ticket in a lottery and this comment came not from a disappointed social scientist but from a successful applicant who is a member of the physics panel (Lowe, 1999: 55). The same comment could well be applied to the NHMRC. In 1999, the NHMRC set up discipline panels which shortlisted funding proposals and recommended appropriate reviewers. At first sight that seemed to be a move in the right direction. However, as Daly (1998) argued in the last issue, the way in which decisions are taken on these panels is strongly dependant on the membership of the panel. Moreover, as decisions are reached through consensus, having a representative from the health social sciences loses its effect if there is a predominance of members who have no feel for the issues we address or the methods we use. Suffice it to say that the two discipline panels to which most of our proposals were referred did not fill health social scientists with confidence. In 1999, shortlisted projects were referred to regional interview panels for final assessment. For many of us the questions which we were asked to address at interview demonstrated a lack of understanding of our methods, especially qualitative method, and our research procedures. Too many of us had to spend our interview time defending our methods rather than discussing our specific projects. In 2000 the problems are set to intensify as the National Health and Medical Research Council moves away from interviews with the discipline panels making decisions without the benefit of interview.

Clearly, we face a serious problem with respect to health research funding. Clearly too this is not a problem which we should address on an individual basis. The Australian Sociological Association is the professional organisation which represents sociologists in Australia. With growing emphasis in our universities on entrepreneurial activities, our lack of access to health research funding is a serious issue, one to which this organisation could well turn its attention.

The 1999 edition of this journal focuses on issues of research methodology including the way in which we set up our research, design our projects and implement these designs in the field. In the first paper `Research Collaboration: A Politico-Ethical Approach to Effective Partnerships', Cathy Hawes and Carolyn Emden, argue that collaborative research with researchers from other disciplines or areas of practice, requires careful negotiation. There are pitfalls here for the unwary researcher, including team issues, authorship issues and funding issues which are considered with respect to the Australian government's plans for research in 2000 and beyond. The authors recommend that researchers take careful account of power relations and suggest an ethical stance whereby trust is a key factor in the joint endeavour.

In the next paper, entitled `Reflexivity as Method', Jan Fook addresses one of the issues which qualitative researchers hold dear to their hearts. She reviews the main usages of the concept of reflexivity, differentiating it from reflectivity, and argues that both the stance (reflexivity) and the process (reflectivity) of locating the self, and celebrating the subjective in research, can become research methods. Deborah Warr also addresses the issue of reflexivity in her paper, `Personal Troubles, Public Issues, and the Reflexive Practice of Research'. She argues against the practice of seeing subjectivity and objectivity as mutuality exclusive research perspectives. If researchers are to follow C. Wright Mills and attempt to link personal problems to public issues, then we need to use a reflexive approach to research methodology and, in turn, this allows us to resolve the tensions between subjectivity and objectivity through a focus on common sense knowledge. There is a clear need for reflexive research practice when we include ourselves as participants in our own research. This is the topic addressed by Maggie Kirkman in her paper: `I didn't Interview Myself: The Researcher as Participant in Narrative Research'. The problems of `interviewing ourselves', she argues, are resolved by meditating on the meaning of what is being researched as well as self-referential aspects of the researcher's influence on the outcomes of the research.

The last two papers address research in the field. In 'Life after a Heart Attack: Issues of Method', Emma Hughes discusses issues of theoretical sampling which have emerged from a study of life after a heart attack. Of particular importance to this study are strategies for dealing with issues like depression which emerge from interviews but which cannot be sampled for in any straightforward way. Karen Willis's analysis of screening mammography is focused at the policy level. In 'Compromise, Country Women and Cancer: Women's Health Policy in Australia' she draws on the National Women's Health Policy to raise questions about the implementation of this policy. Her data come from interviews conducted with women intimately involved in women's health at the time when the screening program was introduced.

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