Between participatory research and standardized measurement process. Methodological challenges in researching discrimination

There is a dilemma concerning the goal of research in social sciences. Conducting democratising and action research stresses the importance of educating the society giving the defavorised groups certain level of empowerment. Nonetheless, some researchers believe that a research process should be free from any other goals than cognitive ones in order to obtain an objective knowledge about the world we live in. Therefore a component of “action” should be separated from a research process.  A goal of our presentation is to discuss strategies toward democratisation of research process on the one hand and application of standardised measurement procedures on the other. The issue is presented in the light of developing quantitative questionnaire for national research study of discrimination of various minorities and ethnic groups. The study was conducted among a representative population of Poles. In order to introduce democratic procedures and empower discriminated minorities we engaged defavorised groups in the process of developing the research tool. The aspect that we put the strongest emphasis on was the language. The greatest challenge was to balance inclusive and sensitive expressions with the language commonly used in the society. Moreover we avoided categories particularly influenced by power relations. All of those aspects shall be presented in detail during our speech.