CITATION AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
Cite as: Dervin, B. (2003). Sense-Making’s journey from metatheory to methodology to method: An example using information seeking and use as research focus.In B. Dervin & L. Foreman-Wernet (with E. Lauterbach) (Eds.). (2003). Sense-Making Methodology reader: Selected writings of Brenda Dervin (pp. 133-164). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
© Hampton Press and Brenda Dervin (2003).

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ABSTRACT:
This paper is a longer version of the article originally published in Information Processing and Management under the title “On studying information seeking methodologically: The implications of connecting metatheory to method” (Dervin, 1999). This version includes a section on “Mega gaps: Metatheory, methodology, and method” not included in the published journal article. The purpose for this paper was to explore the implications of articulating the bridges that are built, usually implicitly, between metatheory and method, and between these and their ultimate interests, the doing of research. The author’s goal was to articulate the uses of methodology. In so doing, Dervin proposes that to chart this as a mandate is to assume—in contradiction to extant wisdom—that: (a) the journey has not yet been fully mapped; and (b) in fact there are multiple and ever-changing ways of bridging these gaps with no single agreed upon set of criteria by which the results can be evaluated. Above these assumptions is a higher-level assumption that impels this journey: that taking an explicitly and self-consciously methodological approach is necessary to the improvement of the enterprise of systematic study.

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