Policy analysis research in higher education: negotiating dilemmas

Abstract

Increasingly, qualitative research is funded by agencies – whether government or national agencies or in the private sector – that have a direct interest in the research that they are funding. Especially in qualitative research in such situations, methodological issues arise but so too do dilemmas, both in the actual conduct of the study and in the writing and the positioning of ensuing texts (for example, in relation to value neutrality and value commitment, in doing justice to the multiple and conflicting interests of various constituencies and in steering among competing ideologies). Here, in this paper, such dilemmas are brought out in an account of a study conducted in the UK in the 1990s, to review and to evaluate the UK’s then quality assurance system.