Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
became more important in later conversations, in which he provided data that
were more difficult to verify using conventional inquiry methods. A natural
by-product of triangulation in this example was additional documentation
about the student's overall growth or progress in the program as well as about
the health of the program overall.
Triangulation works with any topic, in any setting, and on any level. It is as
effective in studying the high school classroom as it is in studying higher-
education administration. The trick is to compare comparable items and levels
during analysis. In studying postsecondary institutions, I usually break down
my unit of analysis into manageable pieces, such as school, department, or lab-
oratory. Then I select the most significant concerns that emerged during the
initial review period. I focus on those concerns throughout the study, refining
my understanding of them by working with people in the field. I confirm some
hypotheses, learn about new dimensions of the problems, and crystallize my
overall conception of how the place operates by constantly triangulating infor-
mation. Later, I use triangulated information about an individual faculty mem-
ber and generalize some of these data to university-wide concerns.
One faculty member complained about the lack of funding for his labora-
tory during a funding hiatus while he was between grants. A review of past
records and interviews with other principal investigators (to learn what they
thought of the situation) and with other faculty members (to discover what
they had done during past crises) revealed that his concern was widespread.
Funding crises had a direct impact on the principal investigator's ability to
maintain continuity in the department. A principal investigator's research pro-
gram can come to a grinding halt without funds to pay the researchers. A com-
parison of this faculty member's complaint with other faculty complaints and
internal memoranda established that funding was a real problem for the
research laboratories and merited further investigation. Additional interviews
with various government agency officials and university deans revealed that,
from a bureaucratic perspective, the problem was merely a paperwork issue.
Whether to fund a certain project was not in question. The bureaucratic struc-
ture simply created normal delays in processing renewal papers for additional
funding. Therefore, the issue was really how to handle a paperwork delay and
not how to survive between grants. The difference between these two situations
is enormous. In most cases, money for these laboratories was promised and
would be coming to the principal investigator eventually. One dean indicated
that he was already aware of and working on this problem. Unfortunately, he
had never discussed it with other deans, directors, or principal investigators.
Thus, the principal investigators and their researchers were left to worry about
what was essentially a paper problem. The larger issue that emerged from this
triangulation effort was the lack of communication within the school and
