Since I have chosen a highly complex research question that
relies on interpreting data from conflicting and often partisan sources, there
are many limitations to my study.
The first limitation is the context in which the research
question was developed. Perhaps it would
have been better to ask a quantitative question; “Was there a difference in the
way that COINTELPRO programs were conducted against NEW LEFT and WHITE HATE
targets?” This is a question that
possibly should be resolved before investigating the relationship between
Hoover's use of bureaucratic politics and the efficiency of COINTELPRO
operations in the two programs.
A second contextual issue is that bureaucratic politics is
just one factor in several that may have affected COINTELPRO success; there is
the possibility that the internal culture of the FBI interfered with the
ability of agents to infiltrate the New Left, the possibility that Sullivan's
attempt to replace Hoover as director and the resultant fall-out from that
situation affected field operations, and the possibility that political
liberals who had no problems in countering the right-wing terror of the Klan
suddenly discovered “Constitutional” concerns when the terrorists of the Left
were targeted, and thus abandoned the alliance with Hoover.
A limitation involving the sampling design is that the sample
I used to generate my content analysis is relatively small compared to the
amount of literature that exists; I
could have used additional material from the Church Committee (Intelligence
activities,1976), from Theoharis (2004), from Jeffreys-Jones (2007), from
Elliff (1979), and from Cunningham (2003).
I chose specifically to avoid using material from Churchill (1990) due
to the extreme level of bias in that material.
The research instrument I used was a content analysis. I was unsure of both my use of this method
(my first attempt), and the thoroughness of my attempt. There is software that
can aid in this approach, but I did it manually. It is worth the effort to redo this analysis
with the addition of additional source material and a more efficient
approach.
There is also the issue in data collection of estimating the
effect that COINTELPRO had on the New Left.
DeLoach (1995) notes this difficulty and briefly mentions possible
factors for the subsequent decline in New Left activity which do include
COINTELPRO.
Another data collection limitation is the difficulty in
separating Hoover's personal identification with the agency from his direction
of the agency for the Bureau's sake. For
instance, Gentry (1991) notes an example in which Raymond Chandler, the writer,
insulted Hoover personally, and was subjected to the collection of 250 pages of
personal data in an FBI file.
The last data collection issue is in using data related to
Assistant Director Sullivan's statements.
The literature demonstrates that Sullivan had a pattern of telling his
audience what they wanted to hear at any given time. This applies particularity to data regarding
New Left activities; Sullivan
enthusiastically took part in organizing the Huston plan directed at the New
Left, yet in his autobiography claims that the New Left was not a
threat...this, at a time Mark Felt was being prosecuted for covert FBI
operations.
Finally, the theoretical underpinnings of the study could use
some fleshing out. Bureaucratic politics
is a good model to explain the basics of how Hoover used these particular
tactics and why they succeeded on an organizational advancement basis, but a
model I referred to as the “politics of the personal” could have more fully
explained why Hoover made these tactical choices. “Politics of the personal” was a theory I was
exposed to in undergraduate political science some 25 years ago, but I was
unable to locate a source explaining it, and the only examples I was able to
find of it in use were out of the context I was familiar in understanding; it
seems that the term had been hijacked by 3rd wave feminism.
References
Churchill, W. (1990). The COINTELPRO papers: documents
from the FBI’s secret wars against domestic dissent. Boston, MA: South End
Press.
Cunningham, D. (2003). Understanding State Responses to
Left-versus Right-Wing Threats The FBI’s Repression of the New Left and the Ku
Klux Klan. Social Science History, 27(3), 327–370.
DeLoach, C. (1995). Hoover’s FBI: the inside story by
Hoover’s trusted lieutenant. Washington, D.C. : Lanham, MD: Regnery Pub.
Elliff, J. (1979). The reform of FBI intelligence
operations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gentry, C. (1991). J.
Edgar Hoover: the man and the secrets. New York: Norton.
Intelligence activities and the rights of Americans.
94th Cong 1. (1976).
Jeffreys-Jones, R. (2007). The FBI: a history. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Theoharis, A. G. (2004). The
FBI & American democracy: a brief critical history. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas.
State
the consequences of the limitations. For example, what is the consequence
of a small sample? You mentioned content analysis - how can the results
be validated?
All studies rely on validity and reliability to be of use;
validity refers to the accuracy of measurement and reliability refers to the
stability or the consistency of the measuring instrument (Hagan, 2012), in this
case, my content analysis. If my content
analysis valid, then it accurately measures what I mean it to, the percentage
of supporting literature that had discussed the specific use of the tactic of
bureaucratic politics that I had identified as a variable. If my analysis is reliable, then I should get
the same results every time I repeat the analysis with the same data. If my study is not both valid and reliable,
then the study is of no use and presents no useful knowledge.
Sample size is important in the validity of a study. Triola
(2014) warns that a sample size can be too small in statistical sampling. On the other hand, Krippendorff (2013)
explains that the content analysis method deviates from the representational
mode of sampling theory in that the researcher is seeking to sample texts that
can accurately answer the research question, not to seek to represent the
textual population.
Krippendorff discusses validity in terms of face validity,
social validity, and empirical validity.
Empirical validity is what we are discussing in relation to research
technique. Krippendorf specifies three
obstacles to validation; substantive, conceptual, and methodological
obstacles. Krippendorf suggests that
validating evidence used in the content analysis can be achieved by two
methods. The first is by measuring the
correlative validity, which involves checking the findings obtained through the
content analysis with other findings from methods considered more valid. The second is predictive validity, in which
the findings of the content analysis accurately anticipate knowledge which was
not in the analysis.
Hagan, F. E. (2012). Essentials
of research methods in criminal justice and criminology (3rd ed). Boston:
Prentice Hall.
Krippendorff, K. (2013). Content
analysis: an introduction to its methodology (3rd ed). Los Angeles, Calif.:
Sage.
Triola, M. F. (2014). Elementary
statistics (12th edition). Boston: Pearson.
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