Children's Development Within Social Context 2. [antikvár]

Introduction Contemporary psychology is somewhat exaggeratedly fixated upon the magical word "research." We all are involved in endless empirical investigations, worried about (mostly organizational) issues of data "collection" and "analysis," and evaluating our peers on the basis of their "research quality." And, of course, we never get tired of calling for "more data" (or "better planned studies"). This (admittedly somewhat schematic) description of the activities of present-day psychologists leads us to the focus of this (second) volume of our treatise on child development in its social context. In Volume 1, a variety of metatheoretical issues were covered, but no clearer link with the "research itself" emerged. In this volume, different contributors take many of these general concerns to the realm of "research"—by way of discussing a number of issues in methodology. The reader of this volume will have to make a few adjustments to his or her favorite ways of thinking about "research." First, it is assumed here by the editors (and also by a number of the contributors) that the term research has a wider meaning than is usually implied in present-day empiricistic psychology. Namely, "research" includes in itself interdependence of researchers' activities through all levels—from the metatheoretical to the theoretical realms, and further from there to the construction of methods in accordance with the phenomena and the theoretical assumptions. We insist on the use of the old-fashioned term methodology in the sense of general principles of data construction (given the phenomena of interest, and the researcher's the- !x