Minutes on the discussion of our observation results

We have conducted two in-depth interviews with researchers, as well as an online survey (which produced 8 unique sets of answers)

Here is the summary of our discussion/analysis so far:


What were dominant ideas of both interviews?
Both stressed the importance of interdisciplinarity and internationality of the team.
Both did not talk too much about personal progress per se – they mainly focused on the progress of others, especially that of students (teaching) and group members. We have to explanations why this was the case:
1. Either we simply didn’t ask the right questions/were not experienced enough in conducting such interviews
2. Or the interviews themselves were not long enough in order to allow the subjects to reach insights about themselves.


What did strike us as remarkble?
One of the interviewed scientists reported of a change in scope or level of what she „accepts as an explanation“, namely that, as a PHD student, she thought that she would have to explain everything (bottom up, with all the little details), whereas today she’s more interested in a braod, top-level perspective of things.
Another point was the strong difference in educational backgrounds – i.e. a more abstract, theory-driven education in the US versus a very pragmatic, hands-on, methodological approach of education in Germany (in that specific discipline).
In the other interview, there was also a mentioning of a „culture of scientific progress“ – and how it is supposedly very low in Austria. There’s no teaching here – no one tells the scientsis about it when they start to actually work in science. In general, we indeed got the impression that scientists are indeed not very aware of such a culture, or the paradigms of their own discipline and work.


What did we conclude?
It seems that the environment has a lot of influence on knowledge production and progress in sience – this is especially true for the environment created by having people from diverse backgrounds (educational, paradigmatic, individual interests and motivations) work together. It would therefore seem to be a good thing (for the sake of knowledge creation) to use as many possibilities of such cooperations as possible.
Maybe, in order to find one’s own approach/paradigm in science it is necessary to come into contact with a lot of other different perspectives first --> where paradigms meet, not paradigms are created?


What were the results of the questionnaire?
We did not get as many answers as we expected. In general, it seemed that people who worked longer in science coul also provide clearer and more self-conscious statements here. Also, in general, people seem to be unaware of their specific paradigms – one possible problem here could be that they were simply unaware of the term. A majority of answers indicated that the subjects felt that they had „not yet“ contributed to scientific progress as such.
We also got the impression that many people were not so much reporting their own ideas, as they were reciting what is expected of them, or what other people would say. We’re not sure here if we should have worded our questions differently (design), or whether there is this general tendency that people are afraid to face this kinds of questions/answers.


How does the questionnarire compare to the interviews?
We had the impression that the interviews were much more productive. In hindsight, this might also be because the questionnaire featured questions that were to „large“ or complicated for that kind of medium; it could be better to reserve such broad questions for actual face-to-face interviews.