Peer Reviewed Journal via three different mandatory reviewing processes, since 2006, and, from September 2020, a fourth mandatory peer-editing has been added.
In a plenary talk at WMSCI 2012 entitled “Planning for Action
Research: Looking at Practice through a Different Lens,” this
author asserted that behavioral science practitioners, often “back
into” action research – they start out doing a process
improvement or intervention and discover something along the
way, i.e., generalizable knowledge, that seems worthwhile to
share with their community of practice. It was further asserted
that, had the efforts been conceived of as research from the
outset, the contributions to the body of knowledge would be
more robust and the utility of the projects would improve as
well. This paper continues on that theme.
Action research and process improvement methods are briefly
described and compared. A comparison of two Los Alamos
National Laboratory engineering ethics training projects – one
developed using a process improvement framework, the other
using an action research framework – is put forth to provide
evidence that use of a research “lens” can enhance behavioral
science interventions and the knowledge that may result from
them. The linkage between the Specifying Learning and
Diagnosing stages of the Action Research Cycle provides one
mechanism for integrating the knowledge gained into the
product or process being studied and should provide a
reinforcing loop that leads to continual improvement.
The collaborative relationships among researchers and the
individual, group, or organization that is the subject of the
imp rovement op p ortunity (the “client”), who are likely from
very different backgrounds, and the interpretive epistemology
that are among the hallmarks of action research also contribute
to the quality of the knowledge gained. This paper closes with a
discussion of how Inter-Disciplinary Communication is
embedded within the action research paradigm and how this
likely also enriches the knowledge gained.
