Researching development NGOs
From the late 1980s onwards, NGOs gradually became part of the
research agenda of ‘development studies’, the interdisciplinary field of
scholarship which includes economists, sociologists, political scientists
and anthropologists working on development issues. An important
quantitative study of the third sector was undertaken by Salamon
and Anheier (1997), which measured the relative size and scope of
the sector across national contexts, with important implications for
understanding the diversity of NGOs. On the qualitative side, there
has been a recent increase in detailed, contextualized ethnographic
work on NGOs by anthropologists and others, such as the collection
edited by Igoe and Kelsall (2005). Yet compared with many other
development issues, NGOs have received less in-depth or systematic
research attention at the empirical level. As a result, some argue that
the research literature on development NGOs remains somewhat
underdeveloped. The possible reasons for this are (a) much published
work on NGOs has been in the form of single case studies of specific
organizations, making useful generalization difficult; (b) such studies
were often undertaken by researchers working in ‘consultancy’ mode
on behalf of NGOs themselves or their donors, and so sometimes
lacking in objectivity; (c) NGOs are difficult research subjects, since
many prefer to prioritize their day-to-day work rather than grant access
to researchers.
Source: Lewis (2005