Page 6 - Interdisciplinary Approach to Research

approaching issues from a more diverse and collaborative format. It also strongly supports the

variance in approaches of diversity of thinking and application of resolves that invites experts

and scholars from different research and academic unit orientations.

Significance of Study

The significance of this study lies within the tenets of Interdisciplinary research

endeavors which almost always arises from a shared conviction that the traditional disciplines

are unable or unwilling to address an important problem. For example, social science disciplines

such as anthropology and sociology paid little attention to the social analysis of technology

throughout most of the twentieth century. As a result, many social scientists with interests in

technology have joined science, technology and society programs, which are typically dominated

by scholars drawn from numerous disciplines. They may also arise from new research

developments, such as nanotechnology, which cannot be addressed without combining the

approaches of two or more disciplines. Examples include quantum information processing, an

amalgamation of quantum physics and computer science, and bioinformatics, combining

molecular biology with computer science. Sustainable development as a research area deals with

problems requiring analysis and synthesis across economic, development communication, social

and environmental spheres; often an integration of multiple social and natural science

disciplines. Interdisciplinary research is also key to the study of health sciences, for example in

studying optimal solutions to diseases as was exemplified by Gardy & Brickman (2003) study of

the benefits of interdisciplinary research in their experience with pathogen bioinformatics as an

area in which traditional microbiology and computer science intersect in the study of a variety of

infectious diseases. This dual approach in the analysis and prioritization of data necessary to

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