Contract Shop Epistemology: Credibility and Problem Construction in Applied Social Science

The use of social scientific expertise in forming state policies alters the social structure of scientific fields in a way that has important cognitive consequences. In particular, it leads to a competition between holders of traditional forms of academic recognition, and those who are distinguished by their administrative capacity and links to state personnel. Controversies over the authoritative measurement of the effects of state social policies reflect a social struggle between holders of these two kinds of capital or `credibility.' Based on a case study of evaluation of federal job training programmes in the USA, this paper shows that researchers in academic departments and in non-academic `contract-shops' compete to impose different definitions of research problems and objects of study. These definitions, in turn, favour their interests in accumulating different forms of credibility. Academic economists favour a rationalist approach using formal models, while contract shop researchers promote a case-based empiricism and social experiments.