Aside from deciding whether one’s research will be experimental or observational, cheap or expensive, qualitative or quantitative (or mixed), one must also decide whether one’s research will come from any number of theoretical approaches (Kelly, 2008; Creswell, 2009, 4-20; Cavallo, 2005; ThinkPhD, 2009). Many theoretical approaches are context and subject-specific: Feminism, socialist or Marxist, Foucaldian, etc.
But there are at least four major theoretical approaches that are generally applicable across many domains: Post-positivism, constructivism, advocacy/participatory and pragmatism. These four approaches differ in many ways, but their key distinction is the objective of the research and how the approaches imagine research should be done.
Post-positivists tend to want to investigate the truth, insofar as truth can be discovered, reducing things to their essential characteristics and understanding them atomistically (Creswell, 2009, p. 7). This perspective is called post-positivism because, unlike more traditional philosophical positivism, there is a recognition that there can never be a positive verification of fact in an inductive world after Hume; instead, there can be increasing verification that a theory is likely to be true.
Post-positivists tend to think deterministically: That is, they believe they can find rules that determine the shape and behavior of the universe, even when it comes to social behavior. They thus tend to deny, at least as a broad fact (if not philosophically), free will. Post-positivists are likely to publish research that they might have ethical concerns with or view as going against their advocacy because they feel that the researcher’s role is to be as objective and truthful as possible.
Social constructivism, meanwhile, argues that people want to seek narratives that are useful for their lives, not merely true (Creswell, 2009, p. 8). Obviously, true narratives are useful, but for social constructivists, it is vital to understand how people relate to facts. They thus tend to want to look at the phenomenology of a phenomenon: How people relate to it, perceive it and feel about it.
They seek out subjective meaning. Advocacy and participatory theorists, meanwhile, argue that research can’t be understood except in the context of social advocacy (Creswell, 2009, pp. 9-10). They do not argue that researchers should allow their biases to distort truth, nor do they claim truth is unimportant.
Further, if the facts suggest that an opinion should be changed, they would concur that it should. But advocacy theorists argue that there is no true neutrality in any field, even apparently objective fields of science. People, even researchers, always have biases and agendas, and it is better to be honest about those biases and agendas than to try to cover them up under faux objectivity.
Advocacy and participatory theorists wouldn’t argue that, once an experiment is done, the data should be cooked to find the result that is looked for; that is dishonesty under any theoretical viewpoint. Rather, the advocacy worldview would say that the experiment should be chosen to advance a cause the researcher holds dear and to make sensible comment on some issue.
In the view of advocacy and participatory advocates, it is absurd to imagine the researcher as a disinterested seeker of truth. Who cares about truth in the abstract? Researchers are competing for limited resources that could go instead towards hospitals or food. They must justify what they are doing, and that requires advocating for some socially beneficial position.
The advocacy/participatory worldview takes it for granted that the researcher’s role is as a social advocate: Someone who participates in the social process, elicits participation from subjects and from communities, and tries to discover facts that will help to shed light on social needs.
At the end of any research project, an advocate will not, like a post-positivist, be satisfied if they just summarize the facts successfully; rather, they suggest implications for their research. Pragmatists, meanwhile, adopt an “anything that works” approach. They will choose any methodology, from a purely objective, fact-seeking one to a policy-seeking approach, from a subjective interpretation to an objective analysis, to advance whatever their research would be (Creswell, 2009, pp. 10-12).
In most cases, most researchers are pragmatists: Even die-hard post-positivists can recognize that their work has real social impact, and advocates can recognize that advocacy should be based in the best perception of truth rather than lies. Pragmatists look for solutions based off what works. If abandoning objectivity elicits a better study, they will do it.
References
Cavallo, A.C.M. (2005). Educational and Psychological Research Methods. General Exams Requirement: a paper in a publishable quality. Web.
Creswell, J.W. (2009). Research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed approaches, 3rd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Kelly, E. (2008). Article 3: An Integral Approach to the Buffett Phenomenon — A Proposed Mixed Methods Study. New York, NY: SUNY Press.
ThinkPhD (2009, October). RSH9102B: Activity 1: Discuss worldviews. Web.