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Disciplinary |
Multidisciplinary |
Interdisciplinary |
Transdisciplinary |
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Integration vocabulary |
Independent:
self-reliant and autonomous |
Collaborative:
work together, join forces, team up, and
cooperate |
Coordinated:
organized, synchronized, harmonized, and mutual |
Combined:
joint, shared, collective, and transcending |
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Level of interaction |
Researchers conduct independent research. |
Team members cooperatively conduct research in parallel. |
Team members coordinate frequently and consistently throughout the
project. |
Team members act, plan, and combine research as a collective. |
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Problem definition |
Guided by disciplinary paradigm |
Usually guided by one disciplinary paradigm and often
framed by lead discipline |
Mutually developed by researchers from multiple disciplines
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Transcends disciplinary boundaries; context-specific
with multiple stakeholder perspectives |
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Epistemology |
Researchers rely on disciplinary epistemology. |
Team members rely on disciplinary epistemology, but of differing
paradigms. |
Team members may rely on disciplinary epistemology, but must accept the
validity of different paradigms. |
Team members rely on a transcendent or common epistemology that reflects
the nature of the problem definition. |
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Design, research questions, methods, and theory |
Researchers use traditional disciplinary approaches. |
Team members use traditional disciplinary approaches; research
questions and scales are framed by the discipline that defined the
problem. |
Team members coordinate research design, questions, methods, and theory;
temporal and spatial scales and conceptual frameworks are
synchronized. |
Team members develop new conceptual framework that transcends disciplinary
boundaries; research design, questions, methods, and scales are collectively
developed. |
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Knowledge
generation |
Knowledge created within discipline, and conclusions may generate new
disciplinary research questions |
Knowledge created within disciplines, but conclusions may generate research
questions that are applicable to other disciplines |
Knowledge created that may impact knowledge structures in all disciplines;
conclusions generate new types of interdisciplinary research
questions |
Knowledge restructured through the creation of new shared knowledge; conclusions drive new theoretical frameworks and areas of research |
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Products |
Disciplinary; for disciplinary journals |
Disciplinary or summary of combined disciplinary findings; for
disciplinary journals |
Joint synthesis manuscripts; for interdisciplinary
journals |
Joint synthesis manuscripts that transcend disciplinary
orientations; for interdisciplinary journals |