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Systemic Practice and Action Research, Vol. 16, No. 5, October 2003 ( CI hope that these reviews will be of interest. Please send any comments, replies,
ideas for book reviews, and information about books which may interest SPAR
readers to the following address:Jennifer Wilby
47 Southfield RoadPocklingtonYork YO42 2XE, UKTelephone: 01759 302718E-mail: [email protected] in Social Research: Issues and DebatesNorma R.A. RommKluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York
2001, 326 pp. $45, 31.50 (cloth)ISBN: 0-306-46564-7Norma Romms recent addition to her publications1 on research methodology,
her ground-breaking book, entitled Accountability in Social Research: Issues and
Debates, is an extremely serious work which explores various arguments on what
it might mean to practice social research in an accountable way. She begins her
presentation by taking the reader on a journey across different theoretical positions
and their methodological implications, and she draws these together to explain the
different criteria that might be employed to define researcher accountability. While
the journey is challenging, it offers a scenic experience indeed, as the text weaves
through landscapes full of features and textures that present the reader with a great
deal to learn.Having offered an introduction on the subject of accountability (in terms of
ongoing debates about the practice of science) in Chapter 1, Romm organizes
Chapter 2 as an elucidation and extrapolation of the variety of arguments positioned in relation to one another. She begins with an elucidation of positivism
and concentrates on accountability in terms of positivist argumentation. Researcher1Her other main publications on theory and methodology include The Methodologies of Positivism and
Marxism: Peoples Education in Theoretical Perspective (with V. I. McKay) and Diversity Management (with R. L. Flood).3671094-429X/03/1000-0367/0 C 2003 Plenum Publishing Corporation 2003)Book Reviews368 Book Reviewsaccountability is defined here in terms of striving to adhere to the proper practice
of science. Researchers are seen to be accountable to both the scientific community and the wider community, and as fulfilling this accountability by adhering to
scientific protocol.She then discusses a so-called nonfoundationalist position (similar to Popperian argumentation), which defines researcher accountability in terms of the responsibility to practice science in a way that maximizes the chances of discovering
the truth about the matters under investigation. Next she elucidates the scientific
realist position, which would define researcher accountability as similarly (but
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