There is no doubt that distinct differences occur upon the conductance of research between human and physical geographers. Although, I feel it is relevant to point out that differences also occur within the two disciplines themselves. It may well be that some areas within human geography will have a preference to what maybe considered physical research methods and vica versa. It is also probable that some research methods overlap into both disciplines. Hence no research method or style of presentation is specifically designed for physical or human geography, it is just most likely that certain methods are more popular with one than the other.
There is also no set out rigid structure for either human or physical to follow: no rules which depict the “correct” way in which data and information should be obtained, the researcher will use their discrepancy into deciding which research method will serve them best for achieving the data they wish to obtain.
“different kinds of geographer have very different ways of finding out about the world” (Gilbert)
As physical and human geography are both so individually varied and diverse, they will also both contain certain areas and subjects that have their own preference when it comes to the way in which research is collected and presented. For example in human geography there could be a great difference in research method and style of presentation between political geography compared to cultural geography, even though both are considered to be human geography.
One of the key factors I believe that influence which research method used, is the difference in the type of data that is to be collected between human and physical geography. Physical geography tends to focus upon Quantitative which is of a numerical form, it is data which can be measured and used for statistical analysis, as such it is objective and can be used to support a hypothesis. Human geography however tends to focus upon Qualitative data, this is much more subjective and is non numerical data. Unlike Quantitative it is hard to count, measure and express in a numerical fashion, however due to the nature of how it is obtained it tends to be rich in detail and description.
Because human geography is concerned with patterns of human activity the data that tends to be collected has some sort of relationship to humans and factors that are not easily numerically ranked such as emotions, feelings, thoughts etc. As such, due to the subject matter of human geography, this can be argued to be directly consequent to the research methods used. These tend to be interviews, focus groups or in-depth case studies etc. Because human geography cannot fully be discussed without referring to the physical landscape in which actives by humans are mapped out it is also responsible for research methodologies overlapping between human and physical. For example data obtained using GIS research method can be used by human geographers to compare data between the physical landscape and what relationships it may have socially or environmentally on people.
One research method that would be rarely used by physical geographers would be a survey, the data collected would be useful to human geographers as it could be used to examine and attempt to explain certain geographical issues, the data collected could also be compiled to analyse or present various different or unanimous opinions and thoughts. However physical geography would find survey information much less useful as they attempt to study the physical landscape using measurable quantitative data. For example a persons opinion on how much a coastline has eroded is rather questionable data that could not be held as reliable.
Physical geographers tend to use more field work experiments. Using a previously constructed hypothesis, they attempt to prove or test the hypothesis by collecting measurements or conducting experiments. They tend to find results that are generalisable and that can be replicable. Physical work is often presented with the help of tables and various different types of graph. This often allows trends to be shown and plotted. In a physical paper from The Geographical Journal the complications that can occur through the different methods of physical geographers gaining data in field experiments is demonstrated by the need for the implementation of a methodology section after the introduction. This quote is an example of the methods section: “The extensive data collection exercise included identifying positional shoreline changes through the use of historical ordinance survey maps.”
Overall human and physical geography will always have noticeable differences in the research methods they use as they are subjects with specific special interests, due to this they will also have different ways of representing their data. Human geography for example will represent research from a case study, which is rich in detail, in a narrative or textual format. The existence of overlapping methods merely reminds us however the two subjects are still closely interlinked.
Bibliography:
=
=
Taylor, J.A., Murdock, A.P., and Pontee, N.I (2004) A macro-scale analysis of coastal steepening around the coast of England and Wales. The Geographical Journal, 170, 182
Gilbert, David. 2005. The indiscipline of Human Geography in Introducing Human Geographies edited by Paul Cloke, Philip Crang and Mark Goodwin. Printed in Dubai, imprint of Hodder Education, Page 104
Words = 1057
