All research is process, but it is also about results. One of the themes of this book is that the relationship between the two is far from straightforward. Although other researchers have exposed this aspect of doing research (see e.g. Bell and Encel 1978; Bell and Roberts 1984), the disjunctiveness of the relationship is especially marked in the effort to dissolve the dichotomy of quantitative and qualitative methods. The underlying problem is that facts do not ‘speak for themselves’. And ‘facts’ as such do not exist independently of perception and social construction.

Beyond the production of the results of research lie two other mine-ridden domains: those of the dissemination of research findings and of their policy implications. All research is political in the sense that it is about, and influenced by, relations of power. But much of it is also political in that its findings can be construed as relevant to the making of decisions about the way people live. Like research results, the policy implications of research do not simply emerge from the data. They are not born, but made; they have to be pulled out of the genuine inescapable untidiness of research, and the position of the puller affects the type of yield that is gained. Depending on viewpoint, the same piece of research can have different policy implications. But researchers themselves have an ethical obligation to say what they think the research findings mean. As developed within the feminist critique of knowledge, this moral burden lies particularly on those, like feminists, who approach the doing of research from an overtly political perspective.