From interpretation to action: unique adequacy as a common standard for the evaluation of research in the built environment

The practice of ethnography faces severe obstacles in construction management and design. Erroneous methodological assumptions that have been largely superseded in other disciplines still hold sway in the field. Recently Dainty (2008) bemoaned the failure of construction management researchers to adopt what he terms ‘mixed methodologies’. He places less emphasis on his finding that research adopting purely qualitative methods features even less. However, the finding is clear: of a sample of 107 papers from Construction Management and Economics, 76 (71 per cent) used purely quantitative methods. The reason is not hard to find. In the same volume in which Dainty published his findings, Runeson and Skitmore offered the following advice:

To some, reality is governed by a set of rules of how variables inter-relate and science aims to uncover these rules so that we can understand and describe, through our theories, an objective reality that exists independent of us. To others, reality is subjective, a social construct, changing depending on who views it and existing only in our minds as our constructs.