Social Research

Paradigms in Action

Norman Blaikie, Jan Priest

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780745671857, 9780745671840
• eBook ISBN: 9781509515400
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This unique book explains the central role that research paradigms play in the design and conduct of social research. The authors argue that social research should not just describe or confirm a social problem but should seek to find an explanation for it – and to do so requires research with eyes philosophically wide open. Important philosophical and practice elements of three widely recognized paradigms – Neo-Positive, Interpretive and Critical Realist – are carefully elaborated and their use in action illustrated with detailed examples. The authors show that the philosophical assumptions of a chosen paradigm must match those embedded in a characterization of a research problem and its context. This paradigm orientation is shown to be fundamental to appropriately framing a problem, formulating research questions, deciding on a logic of inquiry and selecting and using methods to investigate it. Ultimately, an appropriate paradigm orientation to social research provides a dispassionate, rigorous and effective basis for the production of new social scientific knowledge. Following on from Blaikies Approaches to Social Enquiry and Designing Social Research, this innovative book will be invaluable to upper-level and research students, their lecturers and supervisors, and researchers across the social sciences.

1
Fundamental Choices in Social Research

Chapter summary

• The book’s philosophical and methodological foundations are outlined using the following questions.
  • What is social research?
  • What is a research paradigm?
  • What have research paradigms got to do with social research?
  • Why these three paradigms?
  • What are logics of inquiry?
  • What is the relationship between research paradigms and logic of inquiry?
  • The ubiquitous role of social actors’ and social researchers’ worldviews is elaborated, particularly how social researchers should regard social actors’ worldviews.
  • Weaknesses in current approaches to the processes by which new knowledge is generated are briefly discussed.
  • Arguments are presented in support of the core theme: the choice of research paradigm is more important than the choice of research methods, and that this choice needs to be conscious and explicit.

Introduction

A superficial glance at popular research methods texts, and published research, reveals that there is an underlying concern about whether quantitative or qualitative methods should be used. Over recent decades, there has been a movement from the defence of one type of method to a willingness to use either type where appropriate. Now the trend is to deliberately use both types together, as mixed methods, and researchers are encouraged to triangulate a variety of methods (see Blaikie 1991 for a critique of naive uses of triangulation).

An appropriate form of mixed methods is to be encouraged. Throughout the book, we support the idea of using a variety of methods in social research. However, we propose to shift the primary consideration to research paradigms and how they can be used singly or in combination. To make this shift it is necessary to recognize the role that worldviews play, not only in everyday life but also in social research.

What are the book’s philosophical and methodological foundations?

What is social research?

Social research is about solving problems, which include both intellectual puzzles and practical problems. As Robert Merton stated many years ago, ‘every problem in a science involves a question’ (Merton 1959b: x). Social scientists want to be able to describe, understand and explain puzzling aspects of social life. They may also want to try to influence or change some features of a social situation. We want to know what is going on, why it is happening and, maybe, how it could be different (see Blaikie 2010: 10–11 for a ‘manifesto of social research’).

In order to research a problem, it must be translated into one or more research questions – ‘what’, ‘why’ and/or ‘how’ questions. (For a detailed discussion of research questions, see Blaikie 2010: 58–69). Some studies may only require one research question while others may need a set of questions. Some studies may concentrate on ‘what’ questions while others may also include ‘why’ questions. It is also possible to include all three types of research questions. Just how many and what types of questions will be entertained depends on the nature and complexity of the research problem and, more importantly, how much of it the researcher wishes to investigate.

Once a research problem is defined, and research questions established, it is then necessary to begin to think about all the other decisions that have to be made in order to answer the research questions. These include:

• the research paradigm or paradigms to be adopted, including the logic or logics of inquiry;
• the context in which the research will be conducted;
• the concepts and theories that will be used;
• who or what will be the sources of data;
• how selections will be made from these sources;
• what kind(s) of data will be required;
• how the data will be collected/generated and analysed; and • how the findings will be communicated (see Blaikie 2010).

It is important to stress that, while this series of decisions is set out here as a linear sequence, in practice the research problem, research questions and the context of the research may emerge, or need to be revisited, as work proceeds. Whether this happens depends to a large extent on which research paradigm is adopted. Therefore, the most important decision in this list is the point of view from which the research will be conducted. This involves the selection of one or more research paradigms, with their philosophical assumptions and associated logics of inquiry.

What is a research paradigm?

Thomas Kuhn (1962) is responsible for introducing the concept of ‘paradigm’ into philosophical, scientific and everyday discourse. It found its way into sociology in the 1970s (Friedrichs 1970) and debates about the relative merits of paradigms continued for decades (see e.g. Lincoln and Guba 1985; Guba 1990; see also Lakatos 1970; Masterman 1970; Barnes 1982).

Kuhn (1970a) argued that scientific communities share a paradigm, or ‘discipline matrix’, which consists of views of the nature of reality (ontological assumptions), concepts, theories and techniques of investigation that are regarded as appropriate (epistemology), and examples of previous scientific achievements that provide models (exemplars) for scientific practice. Our use of ‘paradigm’ is consistent with Kuhn’s views.

According to Kuhn, the adherents to rival paradigms live in different worlds. As their concepts, theories and practices are based on different ontological and epistemological assumptions, it is difficult for adherents to different paradigms to communicate effectively; there is no common vocabulary with shared meanings, and there is no neutral ground from which to adjudicate the merits of the paradigms or their products. While Kuhn may have somewhat overstated the case for the incommensurability of paradigms, the relevance of paradigms to research cannot be overstated.

The role of paradigms in the natural sciences has been well demonstrated by Kuhn. He saw disciplines in the natural sciences as being dominated by a single paradigm that, over time, is replaced by another, usually in a slow revolution. However, the social sciences are characterized by concurrent, competing research paradigms. It is the research paradigms that currently dominate the social sciences, and that we believe to be the most useful for social researchers, that are the focus of this book.

The idea that social theories can be seen as adopting different points of view is now well established. Consult any review of social theories and you will be confronted by an array of philosophical and theoretical perspectives. The defining characteristics of these perspectives are the assumptions made about the nature of social reality (ontology) and the basis of social order.

The key point is that different theoretical perspectives provide different kinds of explanations of social life. However, social researchers have to go further than this; they need another set of assumptions; epistemological assumptions that indicate how knowledge of this (assumed) social reality can be obtained. Social researchers have to select and argue for assumptions that are judged to be the most appropriate for investigating the problem at hand. They have to decide on the best way to obtain the knowledge necessary to answer research question(s).

To reiterate, the key feature of a research paradigm is its ontological and epistemological assumptions. In any attempt to produce new knowledge about social life, it is vital that the choice of these assumptions be made explicit. Then the descriptions, understanding and explanations produced from the point of view of a particular research paradigm can be evaluated in terms of those assumptions and sense made of different findings from research conducted from different points of view.

Two important arguments that run through the book are: paradigms are unavoidable in research; and loyalty to one paradigm is both unnecessary and undesirable. Research paradigms offer alternative ways of addressing research problems; they are like different tools for different tasks. Rather than declaring allegiance to only one, and using it to address every research problem, research paradigms provide a range of possible ways of approaching and investigating a research problem. This choice is not about methods of investigation but about ontological and epistemological assumptions and logics of inquiry. The challenge is to select a paradigm that will provide the greatest chance of answering a research question, given the entailed assumptions.¹

What have research paradigms got to do with social research?

In spite of all the arguments and claims made that researchers should be ‘objective’, and that research is used to produce truths about the social world, it is our view that it is not possible to adopt a neutral point of view to achieve this; there is no alternative but to view the social world from somewhere. As a consequence, all knowledge generated by social research is tentative because it is conducted from a particular point of view. This has an influence on:

• the kinds of problems that are selected for research;
• how they are defined;
• how they are investigated; and
• how the products of investigation may be understood and used.

The question arises as to whether the need for researchers to adopt a point of view in social research jeopardizes the possibility of making useful contributions to knowledge. The purists might argue that to allow such a subjective element to enter into the research process is to destroy the credibility of the findings. It is certainly true that adopting a point of view affects the value of contributions to knowledge by putting limits on their utility; limits on what is seen and discovered, on what is included and excluded from consideration. However, the critical question is: have we any alternative?

When complex problems are researched, it is likely that more than one research paradigm will need to be used. While the notion of a single truth must be abandoned in the social sciences, what a multi-paradigm approach produces is the possibility of increasing the comprehensiveness of knowledge.

There is a close relationship between how the social world is viewed and the choices available for advancing knowledge of that world, i.e. between ontological and epistemological assumptions. Blai...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Fundamental Choices in Social Research
• 2 Road Maps for Research
• 3 Principles of Neo-Positive Research
• 4 The Neo-Positive Research Paradigm in Action
• 5 Principles of Interpretive Research
• 6 The Interpretive Research Paradigm in Action
• 7 Principles of Critical Realist Research
• 8 The Critical Realist Research Paradigm in Action
• 9 Multiple Paradigm Research
• 10 And Another Thing . . .
• Appendix: Review Questions
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement