Investigative Research
Investigative research is a name given to a collection of research techniques and methods used by researchers (including journalists, social scientists and others). It is intended to unearth secret, hidden or obscure information that can build a more comprehensive picture of the issue under investigation.
Orientation
Jack Douglas advocated ‘investigative’ social research in his 1976 book. He sums up the approach as follows ‘conflict is the reality of life, suspicion is the guiding principle’[1] Lee criticises this by noting the potential for the scepticism necessary to ‘harden into cynicism and a contempt for those studied’[2]
Covert methods
Gunter Walraff is a German investigative journalist who specialises in going undercover to reveal abuses of power. His work is excoriated by corporate lobby groups such as the West German Employers association:
- When [Walraff] describes an industry on the basis of his ‘research’, his writing is characterised by a consistent scale of social values which could by fashioned only by a conscious ideologist of class struggle. Each of Walraff’s publications reaches us as a hatefilled social-political campaign aimed at strengthening the machinations of class struggle. His purpose is to arouse among workers by hand and brain a class-consciousness which they will ultimately use to destroy the social system. his methods of investigation and documentation must be categorically condemned; the logical consequence of his point of view is that the end justifies any means and that all sense of responsibility is lost.[3]
