ABSTRACT
The previous chapter argued that although there is an inevitable and indissoluble link between scientific and everyday thinking and between social theories and moral and political values, critical investigation is not impossible. There are better and worse ways of conducting research and good research produces knowledge that is more objective and reliable than bad research. However, within the social scientific community, there is little agreement as to what precisely constitutes good research practice. In fact, there are actually two key traditions within social science which recommend very different approaches to research, and this makes the whole question of ensuring that social scientific research produces reliable, objective knowledge extremely problematic. This chapter sets out to address some of these problems. It is therefore concerned with debates about two basic issues; the question of how social scientific research is to be distinguished from other ways of knowing about the world, and questions about bias and validity.
