Understanding Positivism and Interpretivism in Research (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I receive a lot of questions about this concept, which is called Philosophical Paradigm. So think about Philosophical Paradigm as a set of beliefs and practices that is utilized or applied by a group of researchers. So under this paradigm, we have Positivism. And then we also have Interpretivism. We have other ones, but I'm going to limit myself to these two for now. And then I'm going to also emphasize on the Interpretivism because that is related to qualitative research. I just want to use a simple term to explain so that you understand it. And if you have any question, you can put it in the comment section and I'll be happy to address them for you. I provide also consultation. If you are interested in consultation, you can also book an appointment with me. I put my information in the description area there. So the two main types that I'm going to focus on in terms of Philosophical Paradigm is Positivism and Interpretivism. Well, so Positivism, those researchers believe that there's a single truth and you are working towards looking for the truth. And in terms of way of reasoning, the procedures are related to seductive reasoning. So this means that, think about it in case there's a theory, right? These researchers develop hypothesis based on a theory or based on the literature or based on what, right? Then they do research by collecting data to test the hypothesis. So based on what they found, it will help them to accept or reject hypothesis. This procedure is called deductive approach, right? Because you look for evidence to debunk or accept a statement, which is called a hypothesis or sometimes it's a theory. In qualitative study is very different. We most of the time focus on inductive approach where you collect data, analyze, and then helps you to develop a theory, right? Instead of us testing a theory, we develop a theory. So we explore a phenomenon by going and maybe collecting data through interviews, focus group, observations, right? We collect words and then analyze developing themes and we'll be able to explore further connection between the themes so that we can form a theory, right? We normally don't test a theory because we don't collect numbers, right? So if you are under interpretivist approach, this is what you are doing. You believe that there are multiple realities or multiple truth. And why do you believe that there are multiple truth? Because we believe that each participant that you talk to have unique and different background and experience and how they make sense of the things around them or how they make sense of their experience. So this means that when you are collecting data, you are collecting different kinds of truth, different kinds of views, right? So participant background can affect how they experience a phenomenon and how they make sense and also how they narrate the phenomenon to you. So let's say you have five participants and you are focusing on a specific phenomenon, maybe burnout. The way that each of them will provide or express their views may be different and unique and that is why we accept the need for multiple realities, right? We as a researcher also have our own realities because our background and our preconceived ideas can affect the phenomenon, right? So each of these paradigms, the positivist and interpretivist, they are philosophical assumptions that are associated with them, right? The assumption can be grouped in four different concepts or ideas. One is epistemology, right? Assumptions that are related to epistemology. Second assumption that are related to ontology. Third assumption that are related to archaeology. And the third, fourth one, methodology, right? So for positivism, assumptions that are related to epistemology. So epistemology is more about the study of knowledge, right? So when a positivist is studying knowledge, they make sure that they distance themselves from what they are studying so that they will not be biased, right? So that's why they do, they collect numbers, they use an instrument to measure a specific phenomenon and or a concept or a group of concepts and they collect data using survey, they conduct statistical analysis and get their results. And then they can accept or reject a specific hypothesis. And that interpretivist point of view, when it comes to the study of knowledge, we believe that when you are studying knowledge, you have to get closer to the phenomenon and also the source of that knowledge, right? So the phenomenon could be a topic, maybe the topic will be burnout and the source of that information will be maybe those people who are experiencing burnout that you want to talk to. In order to gain knowledge, in order to gain understanding, you have to be close to the phenomenon and also the source of the information, right? So that's why qualitative researchers, we view ourselves as instrument getting close, they're participating with them, getting all the information that we need and using that information to address our research question. As we are getting closer to them, there's influencing going on here. You may influence the participants, participants may also influence you. This means that participants are talking about their subjective experience and you are also making sense of it with your own kind of preconceived ideas and the biases that you have. So it's very important that we note that in qualitative study, there's no way that you can be objective, right? Because we are not doing quantitative study but you can manage your subjectivity, right? You are an instrument, you are gaining subjective understanding of what you are receiving from participants, you are interviewing participants, you are influencing them, you are influencing the topic or even the kind of question that we accept, you are also going to analyze the data, right? And your experience may influence the phenomenon. Because of that influence, you have to be aware of strategies that you can use to manage so that your background and preconceived ideas may not overly influence the phenomenon, right? So what do you do? We have one way of managing it is to bracket your background, your knowledge, your experience and preconceived ideas. So bracketing has different steps, right? So first step is to acknowledge your knowledge about the subject matter, acknowledge your experience related to what you are studying, acknowledge the expectation and the biases that you have and then putting them aside so that you will be able to receive that information from participant free from your own biases. So you behave like a reporter, you go to participant, collect that information from participant and then analyze that information and present it to your audience, right? So that's all about the philosophical assumptions associated with epistemology. Let's go to philosophical assumptions related to ontology. So ontology is a study of reality, right? So for positivists they have single reality or single truth but for interpretivists they have multiple realities, right? So how does this assumption of believing in multiple realities affect what you are studying? So this means that because you are not looking for one truth you are not in charge of information that participant is giving you. So this means that you shouldn't determine whether what participant is telling you is true or not. That's not your goal. Your goal is collect their truth. Your goal is to create a conducive environment for them to share their truth with you, right? So you go to participant, you give them the chance to share their truth and then you collect that information and then you analyze and present your information. You don't judge whether that information is true or not. You are not, when you interview them, you are just there to ask questions and get information and make sense of what participant is telling you, right? That's all about the ontology, right? Okay, before I talk about the etiology, let's go further with epistemology. So this means that because you're going to collect multiple realities you also have to collect information about the background, right? Without learning about the background of participant it's very difficult for you to really understand their perspectives, right? Because their background and preconceived ideas affect the information that they are giving to you. So one example is that if you want to learn about burnout among primary healthcare physicians you may want to ask them about their age range, want to ask them about how long they have practiced, maybe their gender, ethnicity, how long they have worked in that location, right? How many times a week do they work? All this information will help you to get their stories. So collecting the background information is very important. The situation that they find themselves is so golden to help you to know what is going on. So let's go to ideology. Ideology, just think about it as a value or contest, right? So think about it this way. In order to be able to better understand participants you have to also take information about the contest. And why do you have to also take information about the contest? So that future researchers can be able to transfer your findings to similar contests. So the findings always go to with contests. You see that? You see the connection now. We believe in multiple realities, right? And we believe that participant background and the situation that they find themselves in affect their reality, right? Their experience, how they make sense of their experience and how they narrate. So when you are collecting data to really understand them you also also collect information about the contest. Then when you are presenting your findings you also have to give rich information about their contest so that future researchers can not only understand the findings can also transfer the findings to similar contests. This is a little bit different from positivists. Positivists look beyond the contest. They want to have contest-free findings so that they can generalize the findings to a population. So what they do is that the positivists because of time and resources they may not be able to select all members of the population to research. So they took a sample that represent the characteristics of the main population and they collect data from them and analyze. After they have analyzed the data they have the finding that can be generalized to the population. Right, so that is all about the positivists. For the interpretivists we focus on transferability of the results. After we have collected the data and analyzed we have the findings and we can transfer the findings to similar situations so the contest is very important. Positivists people generalize the findings we don't generalize we transfer the findings to similar situations. And that's why positivists number of participants is a lot compared to us. For we qualitative researchers we don't focus too much on the numbers we focus on the rich information we collect from participants because we are not planning to generalize our findings and we are not trying to run any statistical analysis. Right, so that's what I have for you. Oh, the last one methodology the way that you conduct research. Right, we conduct research mainly using I think I've talked about this one mainly using inductive reasoning which is related to qualitative approach. Positivists focus on deductive approach and I think I want to emphasize on this one. Yes, there are some approaches in qualitative study where we use both inductive and deductive approach. One example is the granite theory. So granite theory use both deductive and inductive. How does that happen? So if you are using granite theory approach you start with inductive process. So this means that you go through the data identify information that are significant and devolve codes categorize the codes and develop themes, right? Then you also explore the relationship among the themes. As you are trying to develop a theory then you move on to the deductive reasoning where you use some of the data to test whether the theory that you have come up with best represent the information or participant information. So that's why in granite theory you can use both inductive and deductive. So it's called abductive reasoning. Apart from positivists and interpretivists we have other ones like constructivist perspective social constructivist perspective. We have fragmative perspective, right? Constructivist as the name implies is about constructing of knowledge, right? Constructivist is an interpretivist view. They believe that knowledge is constructed out of the interaction that people have with each other. So as I interact with you you and me are constructing knowledge, right? I communicate with you you make sense of that information knowledge is formed, right? And then with social constructivism emphasize on we interacting with the society. So you are born into a society and then the society has its own norms you interact with the society and as you are interacting you are gaining knowledge and you're also shaping the knowledge of the society, right? So it's all about interacting in a society to gain knowledge or to create knowledge. Fragmatism is a little bit different. They focus on methodology that will help them to accomplish their goal. If the focus of the study is to understand how people experience burnout and also measure the level of burnout pragmatic person can use qualitative method to explore the experience and also quantitative method to measure the levels of burnout, right? So a pragmatic person focus on what tools and methodologies or what strategies will help them to be able to carry out an objective to reach a goal of exploring or understanding a phenomenon. I hope this information was helpful. If you have any question feel free to put in a comment section and I'll be happy to address them for you. Thank you so much for your time and don't forget to subscribe. And if you also want me to talk about any topic you can put in a comment section and I'll be happy to talk about them. Thank you for your time.