| This qualitative study investigates the experiences of doctoral researchers in creating and carrying out their dissertation research. Five individuals were interviewed for approximately two to four hours during their dissertation process. All were middle class European-American women studying human development and psychology. In my analyses, I used a voice-centered method (Brown et al., 1988) to follow three different dimensions in research experience: the process of coming into relationship with questions, the process of carrying out the work, and the personal process present in inquiry experience. I used the same method to examine specific issues and themes within each dimension. I also constructed narrative summaries to extract specific stories from each person's interviews, grounded in her own language.;The findings support a view of social science research as a creative, emotional, and fundamentally human activity as well as a scientific one. The data show that research is a rich and complicated process that strongly resembles creative process in artistic domains. Rather than being composed solely of selecting appropriate methods and carrying them out, research process in these individuals involved adapting methods, inventing routines for engaging with ideas and data, struggling with isolation and frustration, and moving through cycles of productivity and stasis. The results show that research did not begin with questions, but included a process of finding questions, understanding how those questions connected with personally important issues or life experiences, and finding ways to keep them alive in each aspect of the work. Vulnerability, identity issues, and self-exploration were not only a powerful reality in research experience, but often used as resources in the inquiry process.;This study demonstrates that research does not simply involve executing a set of prescribed steps, but is a complicated process full of unpredictability, inventiveness, and personal challenge. While scientific method is part of this, characterizing research process purely in scientific terms leaves out a great deal. This work points to the importance of reconfiguring research training to better acknowledge and foster the skills necessary for engaging with the complexity of research process, and for understanding connections between personal experience and research work more clearly. |
