Integrating Insights

The essence of interdisciplinary analysis is the integration of insights from multiple perspectives. See Defining Integration This is perhaps the most challenging step in the interdisciplinary research process. It requires creativity. Nevertheless there are strategies for achieving integration. These focus on (and are thus discussed under) Creating Common Ground. Integration is a process. It is thus possible to build on the results of previous efforts at integration, often by integrating over broader sets of theory, method, and phenomena.

It should be noted that the focus of integration (that is, the type of insights being integrated) varies by project:

· Sometimes developing shared understandings of concepts is critical

· In other cases it is theories that must be integrated

· In other cases it is a model

· In still other cases it is policy developments

See Christian Pohl and Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn in chapter 28 “Core Terms in Transdisciplinary Research” in the Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research, 2008, 416. Some of the cases in Repko, Newell, and Szostak Case Studies in Interdisciplinary Research (2012) focus on concepts while others stress theories; a handful of chapters, including Tayler and Henry and Bracy, address how policies might be integrated.

Sarah E. Cornell and Jenneth Parker, "Rising to the Synthesis Challenge in Large-Program Interdisciplinary Science: the QUEST Experience," in Michael O’Rourke et al, Enhancing Communication and Collaboration in Interdisciplinary Research, Sage, July, 2013, 121-47, discusses the actual process of synthesis pursued by researchers in the "Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System" project. Among other things, they stress the importance of agreement on research goals.

Interdisciplinarians should strive to see the issue even-handedly from all relevant perspectives. They are then better able to appreciate the source of different insights.

They should also consciously ignore the temptation to ignore information that is problematic.