Rift between Research & Fieldwork

[Raincatcher]

I am facing the following problems:

1) I am working in a small local research firm with around 9 full-time employees, including 4 researchers (director/owner of the company, research manager, senior research executive, research executive -- me) and 4 fieldwork staff (associate director, 3 fieldwork supervisors one of whom also does data processing) and 1 admin staff. Ever since our associate director came back to the company, after spending one year in another multi-national research company, she has been trying to re-establish her authority by forcing her way into our research department. Since research department is usually considered as "more valuable" in the industry, she has always tried to do our work and in turn make us researchers do hers (i.e., fieldwork), even though she is terrible and her attempts at doing in-dept interviews and group moderation have been disastrous!! For example, she conducted interviews without fully understanding the questions themselves and always asked leading questions. There was a time when I was supposed to write a top-line report for my project but this associate (fieldwork) director again tried to play out politics by making me send faxes to professional respondents (doctors), instead of asking the admin. staff to do so. Since my research manager is of a lower rank in the power hierarchy within the company, she dared not oppose to the associate director and agreed to let me send faxes for her. In the end, my research manager helped me write the top-line report instead.

How would you handle this if you were in my situation?

2) There used to be another data processing staff in my company but she has resigned because she could not stand our associate (fieldwork) director who was always causing troubles. For example, she refused to use an updated (and correct) version of the questionnaire (with correct variable numberings) and thus our DP staff had to cover up her mistakes by correcting the variable numberings for all of the completed questionnaires (n=500)!!!!!!!!

After she left the company, I became the only one in the company who knew how to use SPSS so my boss made me do DP for about 6 months. I even had to do data entry once (When I told a director in another company about this, he was VERY SHOCKED!!). DP was later taken over by a newly recruited fresh graudate who, although has a degree in math/statistics, does not have any experience in data processing. I became responsible for teaching him how to do DP.

I think that my "varied" experience spanning across several subdivisions of the company does not make my resume look good because people tend to think that I do not have a solid foundation in research (i.e., research department).

What do you think? And how can I overcome this?

I am a very dedicated researcher. Ever since I was in university, I had always known that I wanted to make research my career. Therefore, I started to take research methodology and research statistics courses since 2nd year of university. I even paid close to GBP1000 for a summer school in research at the University of Essex (England) after I obtained my bachelor degree. After completing my third year of university and before starting my fourth (honours) year, I approached a professor in a university myself and obtained a position as his research assitant, participating in a survey research commissioned by the government. And when I was studying for my masters degree, I also took several research methodolody and research statistics courses and undertook a qualitative research for my masters thesis (that involved 7 in-depth interviews). I love research so much that I have in the past tried to get as much opportunity as possible for myself to do research and to hone my research skills. And I know I can do it well but all I need is opportunity. But the situation seems to have been turned around!! Our fieldwork team is trying to do researchers' work and researchers are forced to do fieldwork and DP!!! Even if this is not happening, I still cannot forsee myself doing much in-depth or group moderation because my boss is the only moderator/qualitative interviewer (well, occasaionlly my associate (fieldwork) director will do it, although terribly). Even my research manager has not done any group moderation and has only done a few in-depth interviews. Our researchers in the company are only playing supportive roles.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!