Institutional affiliation and the selection of research methods in Public Administration : a South African Perspective

Abstract

This article builds on previous research and tries to establish the reasons for the selection of non-applicable research methods by Public Administration researchers in South Africa. For the purpose of this paper the hypothesis has been set that the methodological preference of the authors of the selected Public Administration articles and theses is determined by an association between the variable “research method” and the variable “institutional affiliation”. Two data sets are analysed, namely the one based on a survey of the research methods of completed South African doctoral theses in Public Administration from 2000 to 2005 and another one based on a survey of articles published in three South African peer-reviewed Public Administration journals from 2000 to 2005. By means of a chi-square test on the two datasets it is shown that an association between the institutional affiliation of authors and the selection of research methods indeed exists, while there seems to be no association between research methods and research topic. It is consequently concluded that the selection of research methods by the authors of the selected scholarly articles was determined more by their institutional affiliation than the research topic. This article makes a contribution within the South African context by applying an association test to identify the reason for the seemingly inconsistent methodological choice.