ABSTRACT
One product of this study is the isolation of a tripartite set of criteria by which to evaluate social research. All projects should generate knowledge within the three components en gaged in a research project: person, problem, and method. In this scheme, self-knowledge (person) is a necessary and publicly relevant product of social research. When I began my socializa tion, I adopted the textbook notion of research, which inte grates problem and method and considers the researcher-asperson as irrelevant or as a potential source of bias. In the participant observation study, I revised the model to include person, problem, and method; in the experiential action study, the model further expanded to include person, team, problem, and method. Each subsequent project led me to recognize addi tional contextual features. The experiential analytic method that extends participant observation and that is my current rest ing point contains many desirable components of a valid, humanizing method for social research. I hesitate to propose experiential analysis, however, as the final answer to the search for method. Rather it is a personal but generalizable resolution that has its own problems. The context for its discussion here is "the search," which I have characterized as the dynamic force within the socialization process. It is interesting to contrast my distillation of "the search" as the key element of the socializa tion process based on my reflexive study with the conclusion of the Bucher and Stelling (1977) study that the experience of socialization is "working at constructing. . . identities" (p. 270). People being socialized search for a way to do the work of their identities, and in the doing they express their understand ing and need for continuing the search.
