Some Useful Terminology!!

Disciplinary: refers to knowledge associated with one academic discipline or profession. It describes types of knowledge, expertise, skills, people, projects, communities, problems, challenges, studies, inquiry, approaches, and research areas that are strongly associated with academic areas of study (academic discipline) or areas of professional practice (profession). For example, the phenomenon of gravitation is strongly associated with academic discipline of physics, and so gravitation is considered to be part of the disciplinary knowledge of physics. Closely associated terms include multidisciplinary (multidisciplinarity), interdisciplinary (interdisciplinarity), transdisciplinary (transdisciplinarity), and crossdisciplinary (crossdisciplinarity). Disciplinary knowledge associated with academic disciplines and professions results in people who are known as expert or specialist, as opposed to generalist who may have studied liberal arts or systems theory. Disciplinary 'silos' create the problem of communicating with experts who speak different languages. Division of labor can lead to productivity and comparative advantage in applying production or problem solving skills, but also adds to the problem of transaction costs and the problem of communication overhead that may require that some individuals develop interactional expertise and establish Trading Zones to communicate across disciplinary 'silos.'

Cross Disciplinary: involving two or more academic disciplines; interdisciplinary: cross-disciplinary studies in Biblical archaeology.

Interdisciplinary: involving two or more academic, scientific, or artistic discipline. 

Transdisciplinarity: connotes a research strategy that crosses many disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach. It applies to research efforts focused on problems that cross the boundaries of two or more disciplines, such as research on effective information systems for biomedical research (see bioinformatics), and can refer to concepts or methods that were originally developed by one discipline, but are now used by several others, such as ethnography, a field research method originally developed in anthropology but now widely used by other disciplines. 


Qualitative Research: Qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or to interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them (Denzin 1994). Qualitative research is intended to penetrate to the deeper significance that the subject of the research ascribes to the topic being researched. It involves an interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter and gives priority to what the data contribute to important research questions or existing information.

Within health care an understanding of the value of evidence from qualitative research to systematic reviews must consider the varied and diffuse nature of evidence (Popay 1998b, Pearson 2005). Qualitative research encompasses a range of philosophies, research designs and specific techniques including in-depth qualitative interviews; participant and non-participant observation; focus groups; document analyses; and a number of other methods of data collection (Pope 2006). Given this range of data types, there are also diverse methodological and theoretical approaches to study design and data analysis such as phenomenology; ethnography; grounded theory; action research; case studies; and a number of others. Theory and the researchers’ perspective also play a key role in qualitative data analysis and in the bases on which generalisations to other contexts may be made.

Within the empirical sciences, the standing of a given theory or hypothesis is entirely dependent upon the quantity and character of the evidence in its favour. It is the relative weight of supporting evidence that allows us to choose between competing theories. Within the natural sciences, knowledge generation involves testing a hypothesis or a set of hypotheses by deriving consequences from it and then testing whether those consequences hold true by experiment and observation.

Health professionals seek evidence to substantiate the worth of a very wide range of activities and interventions and thus the type of evidence needed depends on the nature of the activity and its purpose. For many research questions, for example, those about parental beliefs and childhood vaccination (Mills 2005a, Mills 2005b), qualitative research is an appropriate and desirable methodology.

Ethnographic Studies/Research:  (from Greek ἔθνος ethnos = folk/people and γράφω grapho = to write) is a qualitative research design aimed at exploring cultural phenomena. The resulting field study or a case report reflects the knowledge and the system of meanings in the lives of a cultural group. An ethnography is a means to represent graphically and in writing, the culture of a people.

Ethnography, as the empirical data on human societies and cultures, was pioneered in the biological, social, and cultural branches of anthropology but has also become a popular in the social sciences in general—sociology, communication studies, history—wherever people study ethnic groups, formations, compositions, resettlements, social welfare characteristics, materiality, spirituality, and a peoples ethnogenesis. The typical ethnography is an holistic study and so includes a brief history, and an analysis of the terrain, the climate, and the habitat. In all cases it should be reflexive, make a substantial contribution toward the understanding of the social life of humans, have an aesthetic impact on the reader, and express a credible reality. It observes the world (the study) from the point of view of the subject (not the participant ethnographer) and records all observed behavior and describes all symbol-meaning relations using concepts that avoid casual explanations.






sources: 1- Wikipedia.

               2- dictionary.reference.com

               3- mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk

               4- merriam-webster.com