The Evolving Landscape of Choices for Navigating the ‘Data Triangle’

This chapter sketches out the continuously evolving landscape of potential data-focused methodological choices available to the researcher. A critical aspect of pluralist systemic thinkingPluralist systemic thinking involves making choices about what to include and what to exclude when navigating this landscape for localised research purposesResearcher's journalpurposes/uses, while recognising that some choices may change in response to emergent feedback and learning. Some choices are made by the researcher in advance, other choices may emerge downstream as the research unfolds, and still other choices may be thrust upon the researcher by outside contextual forces. The researcher’s localised landscape for a specific research journeyResearch journey can be conceptually represented as the ‘Data Triangle’. The ‘Data Triangle’ has three vertices: (1) data source strategiesData Triangledata source strategies; (2) data gathering strategiesData Triangledata gathering strategies; and (3) data analysis strategiesData Triangledata analysis strategies. The researcher’s goal is to effectively navigate the ‘Data Triangle’ to construct a clear and convincingConvincing story about what has been learned from the data. Often, researchers must iteratively cycle between the ‘Data Triangle’ vertices to achieve a complete picture of what they are learning, and emerging feedbackSystems conceptsfeedback as well as adaptive feedforwardSystems conceptsfeedforward may cause them to alter their navigational trajectory. Feasibility/viability concerns may cause the researcher to rethink their pathways through the ‘Data Triangle’.