The OED defines action research in terms of objective – it is not about contemplative understanding of the social world but rather is about changing it. That is to say, it fits the specification Marx made in Thesis XI on Feuerbach – the point is not merely description but transformation. If we think of research as intimately associated with transformative action then we have to develop a radically different methodological frame of reference and a set of research approaches which fit with that frame of reference. Unlike the experimenter we are not abstracting from the world in order to establish how it works so that we can develop knowledge which can be applied elsewhere in order to achieve desired outcomes. In that mode the knowledge exists separately from context and can serve as the basis for action in general. It is nomothetic. Does that mean that all action research is inherently ideographic? That is to say, can it only describe the unique and specific instance and that it lacks any potential for the development of transferable knowledge? The argument here will be very much to the contrary. We can develop transferable knowledge based on careful process tracing and systematic case comparison but in the best realist tradition we have to see that knowledge as bounded in terms of the range of its possible application. Determining, which in this usage means delimiting, the boundaries of the range of transferable application of any processual and causal knowledge will be one of the key elements of the action research process.

Let us consider an extension of our definition of the nature of action research.