Research is a Messy Business: An Archeology of the Craft of Socio-Legal Research

Abstract

This paper is the concluding chapter in Simon Halliday and Patrick Schmidt (eds.), Conducting Law and Society Research: Reflections on Methods and Practices (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2009). The book consists of a series of interviews with accomplished law and social science scholars reflecting on one or more major studies each of those scholars has conducted. This chapter considers several themes found in the interviews: Type III error (asking the wrong question), the challenges of collecting original data, the connection between data analysis and writing, the dilemmas of working collaboratively, the growing challenges of conducting surveys, and the problems presented by increasing demands from and strictures imposed by institutional review boards.

Keywords: research methods, qualitative research, quantitative research, data collection