Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- List of examples
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Rethinking theories: the basis of practical research and problems with paradigms
- 2 Basic critical realist concepts
- 3 Structure and agency: making connections
- 4 Health and illness research: value-free or value-laden?
- 5 Four planes of social being: more connections
- 6 Researching transformative change over time
- 7 The point is to change it: connecting research to policy and practice
- ABCD–Articles, books, commentary and dictionary-glossary
- Notes
- References
- Index of subjects
- Index of names
4 - Health and illness research: value-free or value-laden?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- List of examples
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Rethinking theories: the basis of practical research and problems with paradigms
- 2 Basic critical realist concepts
- 3 Structure and agency: making connections
- 4 Health and illness research: value-free or value-laden?
- 5 Four planes of social being: more connections
- 6 Researching transformative change over time
- 7 The point is to change it: connecting research to policy and practice
- ABCD–Articles, books, commentary and dictionary-glossary
- Notes
- References
- Index of subjects
- Index of names
Summary
Child poverty is a key indicator of ill health throughout life. A report about hungry families in Britain recounted young people's shame, guilt and sense of exclusion from normal, everyday activities. Bryony, aged 13, living with her mother and brother said about meal times, ‘It gets a bit to the point where we’ll start feeling guilty because Mum hasn't had anything and we’ve had it’.
The poverty researchers assumed that accurate reports about hunger include people's moral responses. Mary O’Hara contends that powerful groups maintain inequalities partly by the moral blaming and shaming of the poor. The rich claim ceaselessly that they are the brightest and best and the hardest working group. They deserve their wealth and can be trusted to manage it, unlike the feckless poor.
Shame is how they get away with it. Shame is the weapon they use. Shame is the weapon you use on yourself that makes you feel so useless. And those who are shamed most often and most deeply, made to feel ashamed for so much of their life, are the poorest among us.
Just before the 2020 pandemic:
In the UK, numbers of working families in poverty are at an all time high. They rely on benefits from a state system that is driving many more of them into debt and to use food banks, and some to starvation and suicide.
This chapter is about how critical realism (CR) addresses values in health research and helps to extend moral analyses. Health research that describes, measures and provides much vital information is necessary but not sufficient. Research is also needed to explain driving moral forces and how adverse forces might be changed.
This chapter considers: if facts can be separated from values; healthrelated rights; dignity; truth, trust and consent; values and then ethics in health research and what CR can add; health research paradigms and ethics; ethical naturalism and moral realism; learning from other major theorists: advocacy on many levels and, finally, realist evaluation (RE), CR and values. First, value-freedom is considered.
Can and should research be value-free?
Typically, a British Parliamentary report The Health of the Nation assumed a moral consensus: that premature death should be prevented and longevity promoted equally among all social groups.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Critical Realism for Health and Illness ResearchA Practical Introduction, pp. 95 - 126Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021