Table of contents

Four elements of investigative methodology

In ENTRUST, as a network of teamed up practitioners and researchers, we wanted to fully exploit the potential of presence and reciprocity in cross-cultural communication. Our methodology had to enable us to do this in our investigations. Hence ENTRUST employed qualitative, communicative, participatory and iterative practices. We employed these elements of methodology in an emergent rather than predetermined manner, seeking to compose the appropriate investigation design through exploration instead of programming. The following elaborates these four investigative practices:

Qualitative: A qualitative investigation methodology was appropriate in the circumstances of the ENTRUST cities, taking into account the nature of the empirical data, most of which is:

• subjective and cannot be understood independently of the perspective and interest of the actor or interest group from whose position they are perceived,

• contextual and cannot be abstracted from locational relevance, and

• narratives (stories of processes) which cannot be reduced to taxonomies.

This does not belittle the role of quantitative data in supporting qualitative information, and of course the case studies draw on a variety of quantitative data in communicating their messages. There was, though, no attempt to collect comparative statistical data across the city cases.

Communicative: The investigation approach recognised that a central technique of data collection is a process of communication and dialogue, in which the boundaries between 'raw data' and 'interpretation' are blurred. Key tools employed in the network were meetings and site visits which maximised individual and group interaction. A dialogical approach negated traditional role division of researcher and research object, instead stressing reciprocal learning. This involved not merely the management and facilitation of group interaction settings, it also required appropriate forms of recording and processing the discussions, even if the resulting products remained 'intermediate' results not appropriate for external dissemination.

Iterative: The methodology acknowledged the importance of iterative processes. The route from particular, contextual learning to the transferable message has not been a straight line. The requirement of a communicative approach involves messages going 'back and forth'. Knowledge generation has not been a single, unidirectional step, but rather a process which involves an interplay between the unique and the general. Case study data generated initial thematic categories, which were then referred back to the empirical evidence and refined in a recurrent procedure em-ploying a variety of different techniques.

Participatory: The methodology recognised that the 'network' organisational form had to secure acceptance and motivation among members of the partnership. This was achieved by employing an approach in which key themes and investigation issues were developed jointly and 'owned' by the participants instead of being pre-determined by a project coordinator shaping both research questions and investigation method in advance and independently of the network partners. Fundamentally, the principle of participation negates the possibility of a research 'design' and requires an open-ended process.

It is precisely this approach based on the simultaneous interaction of the four practices as described above that has enabled the network to work in mixed teams of practitioners and researchers. These practices allowed at the same time to retain 'particular' relevance for the practitioners and to reach 'general' lessons for researchers. Whereas such a method requires the partners of the network to accept living with indeterminacy and learn to tackle it, it is the common objectives, mutual confidence and shared values that drive the process further instead of precise pre-determined plans.