Investigating Psychology 2
Week 1: Qualitative – Epistemologically Driven Research Questions
What is a paradigm?
“Universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems
and solutions for a community of researchers", i.e.,
what is to be observed and scrutinized
the kind of questions that are supposed to be asked and probed for answers in relation to
this subject
how these questions are to be structured
how the results of scientific investigations should be interpreted
Kuhn, T S (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd Edition) University of Chicago
Press. Section V, pages 43-51
The word paradigm is used to:
Indicate a pattern or model or an outstandingly clear or typical example or
archetype
Also:
cultural themes
worldviews
Ideologies
mindsets
It describes distinct concepts or thought patterns in any scientific discipline or other
epistemological context.
Main components of a paradigm:
Ontology
Concerned with Being
Epistemology
Branch of philosophy concerned with the origins, nature, methods and limits of
knowledge?
Methodology
Finding an Epistemology:
Research Methods: Qualitative or Quantitative (or mixed!)
Which you choose will depend on
your research questions
your underlying philosophy of research
your preferences and skills
Taking a closer look on methods:
What methods will you use to address the research questions?
How many and why this many? (sampling)
How will these methods be designed? i.e. How will the study be conducted? Where? How
will you gain access?
What is the justification for these methods?
What questions will be asked and why?
What are the limitations of these methods and how will you address these limitations?
, How will analysis be undertaken?
What are the ethical concerns related to these methods and how will these be addressed?
All the methodological decisions you make – i.e. how you answer each of the above questions
should be tied to the methodological literature and/or the literature in your subject area.
Basic Principles of Research Design:
Four main features of research design plus a further two, which are distinct, but closely
related
Ontology: How you, the researcher, view the world and the assumptions that you make
about the nature of the world and of reality? What is the nature of the phenomena, or social
reality, that you want to investigate?
Epistemology: The assumptions that you make about the best way of investigating the world
and about reality. What might represent knowledge or evidence of the social reality that you
want to investigate?
Methodology: The way that you group together your research techniques to make a
coherent picture
Methods and techniques: What you actually do in order to collect your data and carry out
your investigations
Research area: What topic is the research concerned with?
Research Question: What do you wish to explain or explore?
These principles will inform which methods you choose: you need to understand how they
fit with your ‘bigger picture’ of the world, and how you choose to investigate it, to ensure
that your work will be coherent and effective
Ontology:
ORIGIN early 18th cent.: from modern Latin ontologia, from Greek ōn, ont- ‘being’ + -
logy.
Ontology is the starting point of all research, after which one’s epistemological and
methodological positions logically follow. A dictionary definition of the term may
describe it as the image of social reality upon which a theory is based.
What is the nature of things in the social world?
For example, are you investigating:
Bodies, subjects, objects, people, individuals, sufferers, service users, patients,
clients
Texts, discourses
Attitudes, beliefs, views
Rationality, emotion, thought, experiences
Feeling, memory, senses, clinical outcomes
Motivations, ideas, perceptions
Cultures, society, groups
Interactions, social relations
Some ontologies are better matched to qualitative analysis than others (e.g., social
processes, interpretations, social relations, experiences etc.)
Four main schools of ontology (how we construct reality):
