Interdisciplinary Team Research: Methods and Problems by Margaret Barron Luszki (review)

gerous age in which the race between creative knowledge and destruction is closer than ever before. Destruction has not yet arrived, and knowledge still has a chance. Those of us who have scientific training and ability should do everything in our power to speed up creation and slow down destruction." William T. Heron University ofMinnesota Interdisciplinary Team Research: Methods and Problems. By Margaret Barron Luszki. New York: New York University Press, for National Training Laboratories, 1958. Pp. xxvii+355. $6.00. In the past, scientific advancement followed the path ofsteadily increasing specialization . In recentyears, especially inthe lasttwo decades, scientistshave beenfaced by problems which have to be studied in their multivariable complexity. Fragmentation along the lines of established academic disciplines will simply not do. As noted by Ronald Lippitt in his Foreword, collaborating creatively with fellow scientists ofother disciplines has become one of the challenging requirements of many contemporary research activities . This volume represents a skilful reformulation and synthesis offive work conferences, attended by a total of 107 investigators, which were concerned with interdisciplinary research in the area ofmental health, from the point ofview ofthe behavioral sciences and psychiatry. It is unfortunate that no conference dealt with the neurological, physiological , and generally .biological aspects of mental health with the same thoroughness. Also, a chapter providing orientation on interdisciplinary research in other fields would have been a welcome addition. An interdisciplinary team is defined as "a group ofpersons who are trained in the use of different tools and concepts, among whom there is an organized division of labor around a common problem, with each member using his own tools, with continuous intercommunication and re-examination ofpostulates in terms ofthe limitations provided by the work ofthe other members, and often with group responsibility for the final product ." The emphasis on some measure ofintegration differentiates this approach from the simpler multidisciplinary description. Amusing and instructive are the sketches, some not lacking the telling features of caricature, ofprototypes ofthe individual disciplines, as seen by their own members and by their interdisciplinary team colleagues. Such information should reduce the strains present in collaborative efforts by bringing out into the open the real and fancied differences in background and viewpoint. The research versus service conflict, regarded as serious in undertakings in the mental health field, is likely to be a less important issue in other contexts. Potentially more troublesome are the differences in views regarding the very nature ofscientific evidence and ofresearch. Anthropologists and psychiatrists prefer the naturalistic approach (observational material provided by situations as found; many observations on single cases; emphasis on the study ofpatterns, essentially qualitative in nature; multiple hypotheses), 522 Book Reviews Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Summer 1959 while physiologists and psychologistsand,to some extent, sociologistsuse the experimental approach (observations made in situations that are manipulated, with experimental controls ; larger series ofsubjects; quantified observations handled through statistical operations ). Such differences are apt to affect the research strategy profoundly, the behavioral and social scientists stressing early conceptualization and clarification ofthe dimensions ofa problem before gathering the data, while in medical and psychiatric research there is a tendency to obtain the data first and delay formulating trie theoretical framework. In thisconnectionastatementmadebyHenryA. Murrayin 1949isofinterest: "Inthesetting up ofresearch for developing new theories, formulating a hypothesis offers a much more clearly defined focus and prospect of advancement of the science than an exploratory fact-collecting investigation." The section on planning and carrying out interdisciplinary projects is the core ofthis volume. It coversthe mainsteps ofresearch operations, from selecting aproblem to analysis ofthe data and reporting the results, with special emphasis on those aspects peculiar to interdisciplinary work (formulation of the research problem, design of the study, methodology, and theory development). Theoretical considerations must imbue the entire research project, but they are especially crucial in the initial and the final phases. Atthe beginning, theoreticalclarification isessentialfortheidentification ofthesignificant aspects of the problem, which influences the selection of methods, and for establishing effective communication among research workers from different disciplines. At the end, the results need to be integrated and interpreted. Preferably, this should be done within a larger framework than any individual discipline provides. Problems ofadministration and personnel management are discussed in reference to the building and maintenance ofa research team, team...