Speaker 1: In the previous video about positivism and interpretivism I tried to explain these two in simple terms by using examples of possible research that we may want to conduct. Also as I explained, although you are not likely to hear scholars explicitly discussing their philosophical worldviews in for example the research papers, sometimes it is useful to understand these terms, especially if you want to argue for example whether methods used in a given study were suitable for achieving the purpose of this study. In this video I hope to further explain these two terms and this time I will do so by introducing another set of confusing terms which are ontology and epistemology. So before I move on to interpretivism and positivism again, I will discuss ontology and epistemology. So firstly ontology. In simple terms ontology is the study of being. So in a philosophical way ontology asks questions such as what is the reality? Or what does it mean to be? Or what is the nature of existence? So as a researcher you will be asking the same kinds of questions even if you don't do it consciously. So you're asking what is the reality that I want to investigate? Because this will ultimately determine how you will investigate this reality. So is reality for example determined by a set of universal laws? Is it something stable that doesn't change and therefore if you want to investigate it the best way to do so would be to observe it, to make notes, to observe the variables or maybe to manipulate these variables if you want to alter or change that reality. Or maybe reality is far from being stable. Maybe it is dynamic and flexible and depends on how we perceive it. So depends on each individual's interpretation of that reality. So in other words how we perceive the reality or what we believe the reality to be will determine how we will approach that reality, how we will investigate this reality. Consider the following example. If we have a boy misbehaving in a class, so for example bullying other children, how are we going to approach this situation? If we believe that the reality can be understood in terms of variables perhaps this behavior is also something that can be understood in terms of variables. So if we understand these variables we can perhaps manipulate them in order to change this boy's behavior. Or maybe his behavior is something that cannot and should not be investigated from this scientific perspective so by observing and recording variables and changing these variables but rather something that would require us to dig much deeper and understand for example social interactions. And this really brings us to epistemology because epistemology is the study of knowledge, of what knowledge is and how we approach or gain that knowledge. So in other words how do we investigate the reality, whatever the reality is. Both the meaning and significance of epistemology and ontology becomes clearer when we think about them in terms of our worldviews or paradigms, so our positivism and interpretivism. And it's also easier to understand positivism and interpretivism through the lens of epistemology and ontology. Before I move on to positivism and interpretivism if you're enjoying this content like the video and if you're new to this channel consider subscribing. This channel is all about qualitative research and helping you develop and conduct a study that will make an impact. The reason it is easier to understand paradigms if you understand what ontology and epistemology are is because within a certain paradigm or worldview there are certain ontological and epistemological beliefs. So each paradigm combines certain beliefs about the reality and how we can access that reality. So first positivism, which is our arguably more scientific paradigm, which sees the reality as something independent and something that should be studied through scientific methods. In terms of ontology, which again is the study of reality, so what does it mean to be and what is the nature of existence for example, positivism quite often takes realism as ontology. Which means that it assumes the reality is governed by a set of universal laws and it's independent of us, of the participants, of people in general. And in terms of epistemology, which is the study of knowledge and how to gain knowledge, quite often positivism takes objectivism as epistemology, which means that we should remain very objective and distanced from our participants in our study. So in fact it is possible, that's the first assumption, it is possible that the researcher and the participants may and should exist independently without influencing each other. So this is this objectivist epistemology. And therefore as researchers we should try to distance ourselves and remain objective when we study this reality. And now interpretivism, which is all about interpretation, subjectivity and understanding. So as researchers we are not trying to discover this single reality that is out there, but rather we are trying to understand that reality and interpret it. So in terms of ontology, interpretivism quite often takes a relativist ontology, which means that the reality is a relative thing. So again it's not a single thing that is just out there and it's waiting to be discovered, but rather there are actually multiple realities that are products of mental constructions. So the reality is something that depends on each individual's set of experiences and beliefs and understanding. So in terms of epistemology, interpretivism takes a subjective epistemology, which means that as researchers, as we enter the research situation, we influence our participants and they influence us. So we are together co-constructing the reality. It's not, again, it's not something stable, something to be measured and discovered, but we are co-constructing the reality and we are influencing each other. As you can see, these two worldviews are quite contrasting. In fact, a metaphor has been used according to which the positivists and interpretivists are like aliens that live on two different planets. So on planet A, the aliens are all about the numbers. They only understand the numbers and therefore they observe these numbers, analyze these numbers and that's how they make sense of the reality around them. And on planet B, they're all about talking, talking and interpreting different things. So they just talk and they try to understand each other's perspectives. Although I do like this metaphor, in practice, it is more common nowadays to see researchers and people who are more flexible in their worldviews. So they are not either positivists or interpretivists. They tend to assume different worldviews that are more, perhaps, open-minded, more tolerant and, like I said, dynamic. So there are other paradigms like post-positivism, constructivism or pragmatism. So in general, just like the quantitative-qualitative distinction tends to be merged nowadays. So we have this mixed methods approach, for example, and the same applies to worldviews. So it's not that common to be trying to strictly follow one of these. But more often we try to combine different worldviews and we may, in general, be, for example, leaning towards positivism. But we may, for example, for our ontology, we still may predominantly think of it in terms of relativism, for example. So it doesn't mean that you have to stick to one worldview, one epistemology and one ontology.