Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Boundary-Work in the Health Research Field: Biomedical and Clinician Scientists’ Perceptions of Social Science Research

  • Published:
Minerva Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Funding agencies in Canada are attempting to break down the organizational boundaries between disciplines to promote interdisciplinary research and foster the integration of the social sciences into the health research field. This paper explores the extent to which biomedical and clinician scientists’ perceptions of social science research operate as a cultural boundary to the inclusion of social scientists into this field. Results indicated that cultural boundaries may impede social scientists’ entry into the health research field through three modalities: (1) biomedical and clinician scientists’ unfavourable and ambivalent posture towards social science research; (2) their opposition to a resource increase for the social sciences; and (3) clinician scientists procedural assessment criteria for social science. The paper also discusses the merits and limitations of Tom Gieryn’s concept of boundary-work for studying social dynamics within the field of science.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. We preferred the designation ‘clinician scientists’ to ‘clinical scientists’ because clinicians’ research activities are not restricted to clinical research, such as clinical trials and case reports, and may include activities intersecting to some degree either with social science or basic science.

  2. We acknowledge that the biomedical and clinical sciences differ significantly in the methods they use and the goal of their scientific endeavor (see Knorr-Cetina 1999, on scientific cultures in basic sciences). We took into account these differences when relevant. However, for the purpose of this paper we decided to consider biomedical and clinical sciences together for two reasons: (1) both are grounded on the premise that the experimental method epitomizes legitimate research procedure; (2) both occupy a dominant position in the health research field, and thus possess the power to act as the arbiter of legitimate science.

  3. For most clinician scientists, social science primarily refers to qualitative research. This perception may be due, in part, to the massive increase of articles using qualitative methods published in clinical journals in recent years (Eakin and Mykhalovskiy 2003). Several clinician scientists in our study also said themselves that they associate social science with qualitative research.

  4. Member checking refers to the verification of the findings with the research participants themselves to confirm their accuracy.

  5. Peer debriefing refers to the process of conferring throughout the study with a colleague who is not involved in the study but who has relevant expertise.

  6. Audit trail refers to the keeping of a record of all decisions made by the researcher to make it possible for an outside reviewer to repeat each stage of the research including the analysis.

  7. Our anticipation that some readers of this paper—predominantly social scientists—may be unfamiliar with some of these methodological tools attests to the disconnect between the predominant conception of “good” social science among clinician scientists and what researchers trained in the social sciences actually do and define as good science.

  8. The criteria were: (1) “Was the analysis repeated by more than one researcher to ensure reliability?” (triangulation); (2) “Could the evidence be inspected independently by others; if relevant, could the process of transcription be independently inspected?” (audit trail); (3) “Was the sampling strategy theoretically comprehensive to ensure the generalisability of the conceptual analyses?” (purposive sampling); (4) “Did the investigator make use of quantitative evidence to test qualitative conclusions where appropriate?” (triangulation) (Mays and Pope 1995: 112).

  9. For an insightful analysis of the procedural approach to social science assessment in medicine and its potential impact on social science research in health, see Eakin and Mykhalovskiy (2003).

  10. A position predominantly held by biomedical scientists.

  11. A position predominantly held by clinician scientists.

  12. The ranking of RCTs and similar statistical-based research is the only issue about which we noticed some level of disagreement between biomedical and clinician scientists. Whereas clinician scientists perceive RCT as being equal to laboratory research in terms of the validity of its results and its methodological rigour, biomedical scientists tended to rank it lower than laboratory research because it can only establish statistical relationship between variables. Despite this difference of opinion about RCT, our data clearly show that clinician scientists don’t dispute the fact that experimental method represents the gold standard of scientific research. For a historical analysis of the relationship between laboratory science and statistical-based research, see Amsterdamska (2005).

  13. Exploring the reasons why ambivalent biomedical and clinician scientists don’t want to reject social science from the scientific field is beyond the scope of this paper. However, we may hypothesise that some of them have been exposed to social science research and have developed, to a certain degree, an openness to it (Albert et al. 2008).

  14. At the time of the study, approximately 18% of the peer-review committees at the CIHR (10 of 54) had some expertise for assessing social science research projects. Although these committees were not specifically devoted to social science, they included at least one panelist with some acquaintance with social science.

  15. Although this respondent was classified as receptive, the receptiveness score he was attributed is 3.8, which places him at the lower end of the receptive respondent category (see Fig. 1). His low score among the receptive category may explain why he/she tends to show some reservation about social science as the ambivalent respondents did.

References

  • Albert, Mathieu, Suzanne Laberge, Brian D. Hodges, Glenn Regehr, and Lorelei Lingard. 2008. Biomedical scientists’ perception of the social sciences in health research. Social Science & Medicine 66: 2520–2531. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.01.052.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Amsterdamska, Olga. 2005. Demarcating epidemiology. Science, Technology & Human Values 30(1): 17–51. doi:10.1177/0162243904270719.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bachrach, Christine, and Ronald P. Abeles. 2004. Social science and health research: Growth at the National Institutes of Health. American Journal of Public Health 94: 22–28. doi:10.2105/AJPH.94.1.22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett, Bruce. 1997. Identity, ideology and inequality: Methodologies in medical anthropology, Guatemala 1950–1995. Social Science & Medicine 44: 579–587. doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(96)00205-5.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bauer, Henry H. 1990. Barriers against interdisciplinarity: Implications for studies of science, technology, and society (STS). Science, Technology & Human Values 15(1): 105–119. doi:10.1177/016224399001500110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Becher, Tony, and Paul R. Trowler. 2001. Academic tribes and territories. Buckingham: The Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bernier, Nicole F. 2005. Integrating political science into health sciences. In The social sciences and humanities in health research, ed. Canadian Institutes of Health Research, 124–125. Ottawa: CIHR.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1975. The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions of the progress of reason. Social Sciences Information. Information Sur les Sciences Sociales 6: 19–47. doi:10.1177/053901847501400602.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. Sociology in question. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984 [1979]. Distinction. A social critique of the judgment of taste (trans: Nice, R.). London: Routledge.

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996 [1992]. The Rules of art: Genesis and structure of the literary field (trans: Susan Emanuel.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 2004 [2001]. Science of science and reflexivity (trans: Nice R.). Cambridge: Polity Press.

  • Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loic Wacquant. 1992. Introduction to reflexive sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burri, Regula Valérie. 2008. Doing distinctions: Boundary work and symbolic capital in radiology. Social Studies of Science 38(1): 35–62. doi:10.1177/0306312707082021.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Calvert, Jane. 2006. What’s special about basic research? Science, Technology & Human Values 31(2): 199–220. doi:10.1177/0162243905283642.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clarke, Alan. 2001. The sociology of health care. New York: Prentice Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clarke, Adele E., Janet K. Shim, Laura Mamo, Jennifer Ruth Fosket, and Jennifer R. Fishman. 2003. Biomedicalization: Technoscientific transformations of health, illness, and US biomedicine. American Sociological Review 68(2): 161–194. doi:10.2307/1519765.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • CIHR–Canadian Institutes of Health Research. 2003. Investigating in Canada’s future: CIHR’s blueprint for health research and innovation. Ottawa. http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/publications/20266.shtml.

  • CIHR–Canadian Institutes of Health Research. 2005. The social sciences and humanities in health research. Ottawa. http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/publications/20266.shtml.

  • Creswell, John W. 1998. Qualitative inquiry and research design. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Villiers, Jessica. 2005. Integrating the techniques of linguistic discourse into health sciences. In The social sciences and humanities in health research, ed. Canadian Institutes of Health Research, 122–123. Ottawa: CIHR.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eakin, Joan M., and Eric Mykhalovskiy. 2003. Reframing the evaluation of qualitative health research: Reflections on a review of appraisal guidelines in the health sciences. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 9(2): 187–194. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2753.2003.00392.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Emirbayer, Mustafa. 1997. Manifesto for relational sociology. American Journal of Sociology 103(2): 281–317. doi:10.1086/231209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foster, George M. 1987. World health organization behavioral science research: Problems and prospects. Social Science & Medicine 24: 709–717. doi:10.1016/0277-9536(87)90107-9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gaziano, Emanuel. 1996. Ecological metaphors as scientific boundary work: Innovation and authority in interwar sociology and biology. American Journal of Sociology 101(4): 874–907. doi:10.1086/230783.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Giacomini, Mita K., and Deborah J. Cook. 2000. Users’ guides to the medical literature. Qualitative research in health care. Are the results of the study valid? JAMA Journal of the American Medical Association 284: 357–362.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gieryn, Thomas F. 1995. Boundaries of science. In Handbook of science and technology studies, ed. Sheila Jasanoff, Gerald E. Markle, James C. Petersen, and Trevor Pinch, 343–393. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gieryn, Thomas F. 1999. Cultural boundaries of science. Credibility on the line. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon, Deborah R. 1988. Clinical science and clinical expertise: Changing boundaries between art and science in medicine. In Biomedicine examined, ed. Margaret Lock, and Deborah R. Gordon, 257–295. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Government of Canada. 2000. Bill C-13. An act to establish the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Ottawa: Government of Canada.

  • Greenhalgh, Trisha, and Rod Taylor. 1997. How to read a paper: Papers that go beyond numbers (qualitative research). BMJ. British Medical Journal 315: 740–743.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guetzkow, Joshua, Michelle Lamont, and Grégoire Mallard. 2004. What is originality in the humanities and the social sciences? American Sociological Review 69(2): 190–212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jeffrey, Paul. 2003. Smoothing the waters: Observations on the process of cross-disciplinary research collaboration. Social Studies of Science 33(4): 539–562. doi:10.1177/0306312703334003.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kendall, Carl. 1989. The use and non-use of anthropology: The diarrheal disease control program in Honduras. In Making our research useful, ed. John van Willigen, Barbara Rylko Bauer, and Ann McElroy, 283–303. Boulder: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 1999. Epistemic cultures. How the sciences make knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuckelman Cobb, Ann, and Sarah Forbes. 2002. Qualitative research: What does it have to offer to the Gerontologists? Journal of Gerontology 57(4): 197–202.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lambert, Helen, and Christopher McKevitt. 2002. Anthropology in health research: From qualitative methods to multidisciplinarity. BMJ. British Medical Journal 325: 210–213. doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7357.210.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lamont, Michelle, Grégoire Mallard, and Joshua Guetzkow. 2006. Rules of fairness. Beyond blind faith: Overcoming the obstacles to interdisciplinary evaluation. Research Evaluation 15(1): 43–55. doi:10.3152/147154406781776002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lau, Lisa, and Margaret Pasquini. 2004. Meeting grounds: Perceiving and defining interdisciplinarity across the arts, social sciences and sciences. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 29(1): 49–64. doi:10.1179/030801804225012437.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lélé, Sharachandra, and Richard B. Norgaard. 2005. Practicing interdisciplinarity. Bioscience 55(11): 967–975. doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2005)055[0967:PI]2.0.CO;2.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacMynowski, Dena P. 2007. Pausing at the brink of interdisciplinarity: Power and knowledge at the meeting of social and biophysical science. Ecology and Society 12(1): 1–14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mays, Nicholas, and Catherine Pope. 1995. Rigour and qualitative research. BMJ. British Medical Journal 311: 109–112.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mays, Nicholas, and Catherine Pope. 2000. Qualitative research in health care. Assessing quality in qualitative research. BMJ. British Medical Journal 320: 50–52. doi:10.1136/bmj.320.7226.50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meyrick, Jane. 2006. What is good qualitative research? A first step towards a comprehensive approach to judging rigour/quality. Journal of Health Psychology 11(5): 799–808. doi:10.1177/1359105306066643.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Napolitano, Dora A., and Caroline O.H. Jones. 2006. Who needs ‘pukka’ anthropologists? A study of the perceptions of the use of anthropology in tropical public health research. Tropical Medicine & International Health 11(8): 1264–1275. doi:10.1111/j.1365-3156.2006.01669.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • NIH–National Institutes of Health. 2007. NIH roadmap for medical research. http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/.

  • Porter, Alan, and Frederik Rossini. 1985. Peer review of interdisciplinary research proposals. Science, Technology & Human Values 10(3): 33–38. doi:10.1177/016224398501000304.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ramsden, Edmund. 2002. Carving up population science: Eugenics, demography and the controversy over the ‘biological law’ of population growth. Social Studies of Science 32(5/6): 857–899.

    Google Scholar 

  • Redclift, Michael. 1998. Dances with wolves? Interdisciplinary research on the global environment. Global Environmental Change 8(3): 177–182. doi:10.1016/S0959-3780(98)00020-X.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rowan, Margo, and Patricia Huston. 1997. Qualitative research articles: Information for authors and peer reviewers. CMAJ. Canadian Medical Association Journal 157(10): 1442–1446.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rychetnik, Lucie, Michael Frommer, Penelope Hawe, and Alan Shiell. 2002. Criteria for evaluating evidence on public health interventions. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 56: 119–127. doi:10.1136/jech.56.2.119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Satterfield, Jason M., Linda S. Mitteness, Melanie Tervalon, and Nancy Adler. 2004. Integrating the social and behavioral sciences in an undergrad medical curriculum: The UCSF essential core. Academic Medicine 79(1): 6–15. doi:10.1097/00001888-200401000-00004.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sillitoe, Paul. 2004. Interdisciplinary experiences: Working with indigenous knowledge in development. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 29(1): 6–23. doi:10.1179/030801804225012428.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stokols, Daniel, Juliana Fuqua, Jennifer Gress, Richard Harvey, Kimari Phillips, Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati, Jennifer Unger, Paula Palmer, Melissa A. Clark, Suzanne M. Colby, Glen Morgan, and William Trochin. 2003. Evaluating transdisciplinary science. Nicotine & Tobacco Research 5(Supp 1): S21–S39. doi:10.1080/14622200310001625555.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Strauss, Anselm L., and Juliet M. Corbin. 1998. Introduction to qualitative research, grounded theory procedures and techniques. Beverly Hills: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vandenberghe, Frédéric. 1999. The Real is relational: An epistemological analysis of Pierre Bourdieu’s generative structuralism. Sociological Theory 17(1): 32–67. doi:10.1111/0735-2751.00064.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, Holly A., Caroline Jones, Martin Alilio, Susan Zimicki, Inez Azevedo, Isaac Nyamongo, Johannes Sommerfeld, Sylvia Meek, Samba Diop, Peter B. Bloland, and Brian Greenwood. 2002. The contribution of social science research to malaria prevention and control. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 80(3): 251–252.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, grant # KTE-72140. The authors wish to thank Jeannine Banack, Wendy McGuire, and Sarah White for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and Anne-Julie Houle for her help in coordinating the project.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wilson Centre, University of Toronto, 200, Elizabeth Street, 1ES-559, Toronto, ON, M5G 2C4, Canada

    Mathieu Albert & Brian D. Hodges

  2. Département de kinésiologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, Succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3J7, Canada

    Suzanne Laberge

Authors
  1. Mathieu Albert
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Suzanne Laberge
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Brian D. Hodges
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mathieu Albert.

Appendix

Appendix

Questions used to construct the receptiveness score

  • “Many health researchers believe that there is a hierarchy of research methods, which is determined by the methodology’s rigor. Do you agree that there is this hierarchy? Explain.”

  • “Some researchers think that qualitative research (such as studies using interviews or focus groups) is mainly to be used in the preliminary phases of quantitative research. Do you agree that this should be the primary use of qualitative methods? Explain.”

  • “Do you think that there are more sources of bias within the social sciences than in the experimental sciences or is it equal? Explain.”

  • “Do you think the fact that the social sciences (or qualitative research) are subject to a greater number of bias compromises the validity of their results? Explain.”

  • “The British Medical Journal has proposed a checklist to assess the scientific value of qualitative studies in the health sciences (Mays and Pope 1995). In the box below, 5 of these criteria are listed. Please give me your opinion on each of them. Do you think these are appropriate criteria for assessing qualitative research?” Our analysis has only scored the following 5th criterion: “Did the investigator make use of quantitative evidence to test qualitative conclusions where appropriate? Explain.”

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Albert, M., Laberge, S. & Hodges, B.D. Boundary-Work in the Health Research Field: Biomedical and Clinician Scientists’ Perceptions of Social Science Research. Minerva 47, 171–194 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-009-9120-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-009-9120-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation