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Thread on #researchfailure
A recent post by @EmmMacfarlane about whether to abandon a research project reminded me of the decade-plus I sunk into a project for modest results, and how I finally learned to WALK AWAY. Follow along with my story...
A recent post by @EmmMacfarlane about whether to abandon a research project reminded me of the decade-plus I sunk into a project for modest results, and how I finally learned to WALK AWAY. Follow along with my story...
I got tenure in 2004. I always knew what my post-tenure project would be: a study of Canadian evangelical Christians and their interaction with Canadian political institutions, which no one was really doing at the time.
It looked like the perfect project. 2004 was a time of fervent debate and struggle over same-sex marriage in Canada. The timing was excellent to study Canadian evangelical political activity, and to compare it with the United States.
My research plan was simple: While American evangelicals could penetrate the porous American political system to exert growing influence, Canadian evangelicals faced a system of concentrated power difficult to crack. So how did that influence Canadian activity and outcomes?
I had a great time in 2004-5 tracking the furious but unsuccessful lobbying against same-sex marriage. I noted that most Canadian evangelical lobbying was unsophisticated and lacked long-term institutionalization. I wrote about that in a chapter here: https://www.ubcpress.ca/faith-politics-and-sexual-diversity-in-canada-and-the-united-states
Things were going great. But then the Harper government was elected in 2006.
My research design was premised on evangelicals as 'outsiders.' But the evangelical aspects of the Tory party, and talk of a Harper social conservative agenda, undermined all that. I needed a new framework...one that could study how evangelicals operated in the halls of power.
But there wasn't much out there. Most research on American evangelicals was useless. It was almost all U.S.-centric public opinion and voting behavior. There was little on evangelical direct influence in Washington. I struggled to transfer ideas and concepts.
No theoretical framework? No problem! I'll just come up with my own! So I dived into all kinds of literature on religion; gender; political institutions; social movements, etc., trying to find something that made sense of what was going on in Canada.
Most of that was unsuccessful. I began to drown in a pool of theories that didn't fit.
Meanwhile, I had even bigger empirical problems. The Harper Conservatives were...not exactly an open book. And any tidbits of information about evangelicals and social conservatism that did escape were difficult to interpret.
If you wanted to show the Harper Tories were pursuing an aggressive theo-con agenda, you could find evidence. But if you wanted to argue evangelicals were marginal, well, that evidence was there too. Because most of the 'evidence' was anecdotes and incidents with little context.
I was submitting journal manuscripts at this point, and they came back with scathing reviews - that I couldn't refute. I was both theoretically and empirically weak and, crucially, I struggled to find an existing literature and concepts where I could orient my work.
I was getting nowhere analyzing religion and the Harper government. I did have more success making big-picture comparisons with the US and other countries in special journal collections, and got two articles out of that.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02722010903319079 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21567689.2011.596416
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02722010903319079 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21567689.2011.596416
But by now it was 2011. Seven years in = 1 book chapter and 2 articles. Not much of a return for all that effort.
So naturally....I doubled down. I was going to crack this.
This is a good point to mention my personal connection to the subject. I grew up evangelical, and while my current religious status is "complicated," I still felt connected to the evangelical world.
Being able to 'speak evangelical.' I figured no one was better placed to make sense of the complicated politics of this community; its complex role in the Harper Conservatives; and how this compared with the United States. This fueled my determination to keep going.
My connections did get me some access, but it barely qualified as scholarly research. It was more like investigative reporting. My best meeting ever was with a senior evangelical Tory who met me away from his office, making it clear he preferred that no one knew we were talking.
He gave a terrific explanation of the sophisticated way in which the party managed evangelicals. But it was all in confidence. In good snowball sample fashion, I asked if I could at least use his name to request other interviews. I can still see the horrified look on his face.
In the end, I did scratch out enough on evangelicals and the Conservative Party to write a chapter on it here, in 2013. https://utorontopress.com/ca/conservatism-in-canada-4
So, 9 years; 4 publications. But surely there was more. By now I felt I had enough research to write a book...just not exactly what it would say. But I was still sure I was on the edge of a breakthrough where it would all fall into place.
International comparisons had been good to me. So I turned to Australia and New Zealand, and eventually got a paper out of that. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10361146.2017.1330396
But I was getting SO tired. I still had all this Canadian stuff and no way to make sense of it all. But I had to!
So much work sunk into this. So many years. So many interviews, clippings, and documents. A great big shiny perfect framework that was surely still out there.
So much work sunk into this. So many years. So many interviews, clippings, and documents. A great big shiny perfect framework that was surely still out there.
In 2016, I was talking with a friend about this now twelve-year odyssey, and how I kept thinking I was turning a corner that never quite materialized.
They said, "This is clearly dragging you down. Why don't you just quit and walk away?"
They said, "This is clearly dragging you down. Why don't you just quit and walk away?"
I'm not sure I had ever given myself permission to ask that question. For many years I thought I had to beat this stuff into the ground until it finally made sense and yielded lots of publications that matched the effort involved. Scholars did not walk away from unfinished work.
But now I allowed myself to ask why I needed to chase this any longer.
I began to look back more clearly and realized that even if there was still a breakthrough ahead, I didn't need to exhaust myself any more, hoping and looking for it.
I began to look back more clearly and realized that even if there was still a breakthrough ahead, I didn't need to exhaust myself any more, hoping and looking for it.
So I decided to see the Australia-NZ paper through to publication and then...stop. And I did. And it felt like a giant load had been lifted off me.
Other than some opeds, I no longer research or write in this area. https://theconversation.com/canadas-marginal-christian-right-121024
The lesson of all this: Not all research projects need to be finished. Sunk costs need to be weighed against diminishing returns. You can overcome short-term discouragement, but don't confuse it with long-term futility. And ask friends for reality checks.
I'll close with shoutouts to people who DID manage to write books about this stuff: @jim_farney; and @pejthomas @jeraldsabin and David Rayside; and also the work of @kebaisley
https://utorontopress.com/ca/social-conservatives-and-party-politics-in-canada-and-the-united-states-4 https://www.ubcpress.ca/religion-and-canadian-party-politics
https://utorontopress.com/ca/social-conservatives-and-party-politics-in-canada-and-the-united-states-4 https://www.ubcpress.ca/religion-and-canadian-party-politics
Discouragement and slow progress is normal in academic research, and even more in these unusual times. It's okay to feel down and that you're not getting anywhere.
But also learn when to give yourself permission to walk away.
Thanks for reading.
But also learn when to give yourself permission to walk away.
Thanks for reading.
