Paradigms & Methodology

Dr Bryan Mills

Frame Work /Paradigm/ Culture/Methodology

Positivist - Scientific Method, Empiricism, Reductionism
Phenomenology - Interpretavist Post-modern Feminist Marxist

Ontology, Epistemology, Methodology

Ontology: being, existence , reality Epistemology: knowledge (nature and limits) Methodology: approach adopted

Process
Inductive
Deductive (Note: sometimes Positivism is called hypothetico-deductive )

Method
Qualitative
Quantitative

Key interpretations of the natural and social world

Theological

Social
Postmodernism Phenomenology Feminism
Positivism

Natural Science
The beginning of the Enlightenment (modern era)

Scientific Method

<1600

1700 1900 Bryan Mills

1800 2000

Positivism
Concerned with experience and empirical knowledge
Personal knowledge backed up by scientific verification - objective. Named by in the 19th Century by Auguste Comte (French Mathematician and Philosopher) - though its origins date back to the Enlightenment. Think of an idea Test Report result

 Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. -Frank Herbert, Dune

Positivism
Logical Positivism (just one of many offshoots) Wittgenstein. Moore, Russell (1920s/30s), And then Logical Empiricism; Both of which saw movements still further away from metaphysics and towards logic and empiricism, claiming that the positivist belief in scientific verification is itself unverifiable.

How to identify Positivism

Has an interest in cause and effect (this is caused by that) and generalisability (the findings are true for all) uses the testing of hypotheses, seeks objectivity and believes that an external object truth exists, will emphasise correlation, will probably be quantitative (numerical) but may also include qualitative work (interview, etc.)

Hypotheses
A hypothesis is a "statement that can be falsified" Coates (1996) gives us 5 'virtues' that make up a hypothesis: 1. Simplicity 2. Generality 3. Refutability 4. Modesty 5. Conservatism It is possible to see from this list why hypotheses are used by positivists, or, inversely, why phenomenologists have no use for them.

Hypotheses
H1 Team working improves productivity in medium sized, labour intensive, manufacturing companies. H0 Null - Team working has no measurable effect on productivity in medium sized, labour intensive, manufacturing companies.

But:
If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud. That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork. -Neil Gershenfeld

Phenomenology
Interested in events as they appear to the consciousness, without reference to theory, deduction or assumptions Named by Edmund Husserl (1913) - the study of structures of consciousness that enable consciousness to refer to objects outside of it. Adapted by sociologists (Schutz) and emphasises peoples' experiences rather than scientific deduction - subjective. Criticised for its habit of producing: Descriptions and uncontrolled hypotheses rather than explanation

How to identify Phenomenology

Very unlikely to have any quantitative work.
Will use interviews, case studies, logs or focus groups. May even use ethnography (living/working amongst subjects).

Seeks interpretation - not cause and effect.

May use action-research or grounded theory

Post Modernism
Towards the middle of the last century a shift began away from the importance of personal interpretation to the importance of discourse. Positivists believed in an external objective world, phenomenologists in an internal subjective one and post-modernist in a world created by discourses. Thus to understand the world we have to understand the discourse we operate within. These discourses (conversations) can be actual conversations (creating cultural discourses), the media, academic disciplines, religions, professional discourses, etc

 The world is not made of molecules, the world is made of stories. -Muriel Rukeyser

Deductive and/or Inductive Process

Deductive and/or Inductive Process

Triangulation
You believe staff are not happy. Qualitative interviews with staff: Pay is too low, more pay needed. Quantitative research shows: Pay is better than equivalent firms, there are no problems.

Triangulation
BOTH TOGETHER Whilst pay is better than could be expected the staff still have a feeling of being hard done by. This may indicate a problem with management style or morale, more research is clearly required. On their own neither approach would have produced the right 'answer'.

Validity The research must lead to the collection of valid data. How valid will depend on the method used and the type of information elicited. Research is valid if it is what it claims to be - truly representative Reliability Replicability and measurability are of prime importance. It is this requirement of replicability that encourages positivists to use quantitative methods. The 'rule' is - you must be confident that another researcher would match your findings.

Validity & Reliability

Hypothesis deductive Positivist or Scientific Mostly quantitative

Problem or lack of understandin g

Methodology Choice

phenomenologica l

inductive

Post Modern

qualitative

Discourse analysis ?