Research methods in Public Administration

Abstract

In their article ‘Research Methodology in the Public Administration Review 1975–1984’, Perry and Kraemer (1986: 216) try to assess how research methodologies in the Public Administration Review ‘ measure up against mainstream social science research’. A survey of literature on Public Administration research in fact shows that it has to some extent been taken for granted that social science methods can and must be applied to Public Administration (Adams and White 1994: 575; Cleary 1992: 60). This does not mean that social science methods are always applied as efficiently as they could be in Public Administration research. Bell (1994: 325) even believes that social science methods are often not justified by context and are imposed in Public Administration in an arbitrary fashion. Wamsley (1996: 364) seems to share this view as he believes that Public Administration is not a discipline ‘of the social science variety’ but an ‘applied interdisciplinary field’. Therefore, one can typify Public Administration as a human science, including the social, management and administrative sciences (Wessels, Pauw and Thani 2009: 12). Nearly a decade after Perry and Kraemer's assessment on research methodologies in Public Administration, Pauw (1995: 48–50) offers a slightly different view on this issue when he states that at least seven categories of scientific disciplines or crafts are active within the human sciences (Pauw 1995: 48–50). One of these categories indeed contains the disciplines or skills used for the investigation of groups — the empirical social science methods — which Pauw (1995: 50) identifies as one of the prominent disciplines within Public Administration. Within the context of this book, we believe that Public Administration has a multi-disciplinary nature and that the disciplines and methods of the empirical social sciences, among others, feature very prominently with-in it. We agree with Gill and Johnson (2002: 44) that one can distinguish between the different methods ‘in terms of their relative emphasis upon deduction or induction, their degree of structure, the kinds of data they generate and the forms of explanation they create’. This reflection will specifically reflect on the variety of research methods applicable to Public Administration as a human science.

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