From Istanbul I came back with my scrapbook full of ideas. One was inspired by two very good presentations, one from Alex Johnston ‘It’s engagement, but is it research?’ and one from Keren Soloman ‘Getting intimate with our world’. Karen came up with the wonderfull concept of ‘Awarenes Quotient’ that I will definitively put in my dictionary (how can the research increase your AQ?)
I have always felt that the one of the underestimated effects of qualitative research is the level of engagement it arouses. Usually research is only judged on the level of insight it produces. But since insight without action is useless and the level of ‘action prowness’ is basically defined by the word ‘engagement’ this factor should always be used in assessing the methods. Without engagement any research delivers nothing but a clever report: expensive paper. With the choice of methods researchers should includen not only the level of insight expected, but also the level of engagement the method arouses.
