Chapter 7 – Understanding and Evaluating Context-Specific Research

This chapter explores the realm of context-specific research, or those studies in which the goal of the work is not necessarily to generalize to larger populations. This chapter reviews the merits of several forms of nongeneralizable research including ethnography, phenomenology, action research, and case studies. It also addresses pilot studies, which have limited generalizability but still seek to utilize the findings to inform future efforts. Several examples of these types of research are included. Sampling procedures for each of these types of research are also explored in order to provide a more in-depth understanding toward how such efforts may reliably contribute to the collective scholarship. The chapter includes guidelines for evaluating the validity of these types of research and concludes with practice exercises to strengthen student comfort with identifying and assessing nongeneralizable work.