To members of the public, the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) set up by the Umno-led BN regime - to investigate causes of Teoh Beng Hock’s (TBH) death (an aide to Ean Yong Hian Wah, a member of the Selangor legislative assembly and state executive council) on July 16, 2009 after he was subjected to an overnight interrogation by Selangor MACC boys over alleged misappropriation of state fund by Ean Yong - is a reluctant gesture.
Under pressure, the regime was trying to appease public uproar when an inquest returned an open verdict that Teoh’s death was neither due to suicide nor homicide. The unwillingness of the regime to leave no stone unturned is reflected by the composition of RCI whose panellists largely come from current judiciary and civil service.
Concerns of bias aside, the public is holding its breath with respect to the effectiveness of the RCI to get to the bottom of ‘the truth’ as it has to grapple with the uncooperative attitude of witnesses from the Selangor MACC, who no doubt have their own skin to take care of, hard-to-find solid empirical evidence under the circumstances, and the opposing views held by regime- appointed pathologists and that of the Selangor government-appointed pathologist.
The former group suggest that Teoh’s death was suicide, while Dr Pornthip who acted for the Selangor government pointed to homicide. So if you are in the RCI, what would you do? How would you decide? Which set of testimonies from the several pathologists would you accept?
Would your decision be based on forensic evidence alone? But is forensics an exact science? Obviously the RCI has recognised the methodological challenges it faced from the very beginning when it appointed a special Hong Kong investigator to assist them. There are other ways the RCI can fall back to other than relying on the so-called quantitative methods of forensic evidence. A mixed-methods research is one of them.
But why do we consider a mixed-methods research? Combined, the three separate yet sequential methods can be described as QUAN (quantitative research method) - QUAL (qualitative research method) - QUAL mixed-methods research (Morse, 2003), a method which has been accepted as the third community of social sciences in the past two decades (Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009, p. 4).
The original dominating position of QUAN in social sciences since the days of Comte in 17th century had its wing clipped when QUAL made inroads in 1970s. Researchers realised that QUAN could not explain many social phenomena adequately (Howe, 1988; Lincoln and Guba, 1985).
Mixed-methods research is another late comer into the research scene as a result of the pioneering efforts of Peirce (1878), James (1907), and Dewey (1920), all cited in Johnson and Onwuegbuzie (2004) as researchers put an end to QUAN versus QUAL debate from 1960- 1980, and device a plan to co- exist as three distinct research communities, with mixed- methods research proponents adopting ‘pragmatism’ as their guiding paradigm (Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009).
Three separate research questions may be formulated to guide the RCI if we assume that finding ‘the truth’ is their ‘ultimate research objective’:
i) Are there empirical data from pathologists that explained TBH’s death?
ii) From the testimonies of Selangor MACC boys, what actually happened?
and iii) If result from second stage is less than satisfactory, can previous suspects shed light on interrogation techniques used by Selangor MACC?
Arising from the foregoing therefore the RCI cannot rely on a mono methodological approach to achieve its stated goal. The truth (real causes) of TBH’s death is within RCI’s reach if it adopts a mixed-methods research strategy.
The RCI is in fact at the tail end of Stage I (QUAN) after listening to and collecting data and analysing them from two sets of pathologists. In addition, the RCI is also near completing with its Stage II of QUAL after listening patiently for several weeks to testimonies from Selangor MACC boys.
Since findings from Dr Pornthip are at odds with testimonies of Selangor MACC boys, the RCI would require assistance of previous suspects of Selangor MACC to shed some lights on their manner and habits of interrogation. Hence the RCI is expected to initiate Stage III of its QUAL soon.
In sum the RCI is on track at least on paper if the above strategy is followed. By embracing a mixed-methods research in their inquiry, it would have overcome many methodological challenges placed on its way.
