The research process

The ‘research process’ we describe in this chapter isn’t our account of what happens when people do research and at what point it happens. Such mechanistic descriptions can certainly be found, but we believe that these are misleading and simplistic. ‘What happens’ is idiosyncratic and redolent with ‘mistakes’ and ‘confusions’ and almost invariably differs from such descriptions. And we believe that these personal idiosyncracies, ‘confusions’ and ‘mistakes’ are, as Virginia Johnson has suggested, at the heart of the research process (1975, quoted in Bell and Newby 1977, p. 9). In effect these aren’t confusions or mistakes, but an inevitable aspect of research.