 Friends, I'm delighted to welcome you to a discussion on research methodology. We know about research methods, but what is the philosophy behind those methods? Why do we choose certain methods and what are the assumptions we make behind those methods? So a lot of the terms we use in research methodology, that is what we are going to discuss today. And my attempt will be to demystify many of these concepts like epistemology, like ontology for example. So let's begin today's discussion. So as I said, the first thing that we'll talk about is ontology. These terms are very familiar to many of us, but as I said we'll try and demystify this epistemology and then the three different research methodologies that we'll be talking about. The positivist social science, the interpretivist social science and the critical social science. So let's begin the discussion with ontology first. So it deals with the nature of being or what exists. And I'm sure we come across many such definitions and I'll try and give examples about that as well. So it asks about what really is and what are the fundamental categories of reality. So that's what we are going to discuss in today's discussion. And when we do many of these studies, we make assumptions about what we will study and its place in the world. So we'll talk about all that. So what actually is reality and we'll talk about that. What we see in the world is that what reality is or what or is it something that we interpret. So that's what ontology is. So basically the ontological assumptions are between these two extremes. One is realism and the other is nominalism. So we will be talking of realist ontology and nominalist ontology. So what is behind these terms? So a realist assumes that whatever we see in the world is reality. And so it's a form of saying what you see is what you get. But a nominalist thinks of reality as something beyond what we see. And I'm sure it makes a lot of sense to understand that realism is about something that we see with our senses or with an extension of our senses. It could be some machine or whatever. And nominalism is about some kind of an interpretation that you make about the world and it's about what you see is not what you get. So when we talk of reality, this is a very, very important assumption to understand that is reality what we see or is it something beyond that. So ontology is basically about that, that what is reality. So as I said, a realist assumes that the real world exists independently and it exists independently of humans and their interpretations. It does not depend on our interpretations, but it depends on, it is real out there. It is something out there and our job is just to understand it or just to make sense of it. So this makes accessing what is in the real world less difficult because you're just whatever you see is what you get. So that's a very straightforward assumption to make that you don't have to deal with interpretations or things like that. A nominalist on the other hand always believes that the real experience is not the real thing. The real world is not everything. It's a scheme of interpretations and it is that inner subjectivity. I mean different people have different interpretations of the world and that is what is more important rather than looking out for something which exists out there. So reality is something which is beyond what we see through our senses and this nominalist experience talks of subjective cultural factors and all these cultural factors are the ones which shape our experience with the physical and the social world and we can never totally remove these factors. These factors will always be there. An extreme nominalist would say that our basic understanding of every physical social experience depends heavily on these interpretive cultural factors. So any form of objective knowledge is impossible. So an extreme nominalist would be on the extreme right side of the continuum between realism and nominalism I shared a few slides ago. And now we come to a very important discussion on what is epistemology that how do we know the world and how do we know what claim is true. So as you can understand that how we know the world is based on the ontological assumptions. So if I talk about a realist ontology then how we know will be different when we talk about a nominalist ontology. If you remember when we talk of a realist ontology we talk about things which are out there and something that we just have to experience our senses and make sense of it. And a nominalist ontology is something different from that. So epistemology includes what we need to do to produce knowledge what are the things that we need to produce knowledge or to get knowledge about certain things. And what the scientific knowledge looks like once we have produced it that means what is good science. So how do you get that knowledge and how do you understand that whether that knowledge is sufficient or good enough. So as I said that these epistemological positions depend on ontologies. So the first is the realist position and it suggests that we can produce knowledge and learn about reality by making careful observations about it because what is reality is just out there. So if we carefully observe about what is out there then we get to know or we get knowledge. So that is one epistemology that just a careful observation provides us with knowledge about the reality. And as we gather this empirical evidence we may find that some of our ideas are consistent with the evidence while others lack supporting evidence. So if I get evidence for my ideas then that idea is correct. If I don't get evidence for my ideas if I don't get empirical evidence means real life evidence then those ideas are not correct. So that is a realist position. And as we investigate empirical reality we can distinguish truth from myth or illusion and we can produce objective knowledge there because knowledge is objective in the sense that it is out there and it does not depend on who is measuring or who is trying to find out that knowledge. So that's a very straightforward way of finding out what is objective knowledge. And working inductively and deductively we can distinguish what is true and what is false. So as I said if we get evidence about a particular idea then that idea is true. If we don't get evidence for that idea that idea is not true. So then we come to the nominalist position and as we've been discussing from the first slide making observations will not lead to knowledge about reality because that knowledge depends on interpretations and subjective views. So the best knowledge we can produce about the world is when we offer carefully considered interpretations of specific people in specific settings. So there is nothing like universal truth. It is about what specific people have to say or have to provide their interpretations about in a specific setting. And once we've discussed what is epistemology and what is ontology let's have a discussion on what is a paradigm. So it is a whole system of thinking. So it includes the basic assumptions it includes the important questions to be answered it includes the research techniques to be used and what good scientific research looks like. So when we talk of the three important paradigms of social science research when we talk of positivism when we talk of interpretivism and we talk of critical theory this is what we'll be talking about. So positivism is what we start off with so that is one very important strand of research. So it is the approach of the natural sciences the basic sciences, physics, chemistry, biology and all that. So here we prefer even in social science in positivist social science we prefer precise quantitative data so the data we get in experiments and surveys and such things and we can use statistics to make sense of that data. So we seek rigorous exact measures and this is what is known as objective research. So positivist researchers try and replicate the approach of the natural sciences and there may also be causal hypothesis that means what causes what. So that we find out by analyzing numbers from the measures. So we analyze the numbers from the measures and we look for those causes. So this is the definition for positivist social science it suggests that it's an organized method for combining deductive logic that means you deduce some interpretations or some inferences from the data with precise empirical observations so that precise empirical observations is important so it can be through experiments as I suggested it could be through surveys and we are looking at a set of causal universal laws and that can be used to predict general patterns of human activity so this is a very very important thing to remember about positivist social science that it depends on precise empirical observations and the idea is to discover and confirm a set of causal laws that what are, so A causes B in these kind of things so that we can use these laws to predict human activity in future. So as you can understand this is one way of replicating the basic sciences. So purpose of positivist research is to obtain scientific explanation so we are trying to discover and document universal causal laws of human behavior so in these circumstances a human being would behave like that so as you can understand a lot of this is there in psychology and such social sciences so we are looking at these kind of causal laws and that the positivists adopt a realist ontology and as you remember positivism is about something which exists out there it is just waiting to be discovered so reality exists it is patterned and it has a natural order so this is how we, this is the ontology that we adopt in positivism and positivism also emphasizes the determinism of relationships so there are certain determining mechanisms as I said we are looking for causal interpretation so that is one kind of determinism that given these situations people will react like this or given these situations people will behave like this so we are looking for these determining mechanisms and what are the effects that it produces what are the behavioral and other kind of cognitive effects that certain mechanisms produce so based on these stimulus what are the responses these kind of things positivism emphasizes determinism and it also investigated how the external forces or structures that operates on individuals produce certain kinds of outcomes behaviors or attitudes so given certain kind of job satisfaction how would people behave or not behave so as we have discussed positivism assumes that the laws operate according to strict logical reasoning so there is some kind of a law and everything operates according to that and researchers connect these causal laws and deductively connect the many facts that they observe so they are looking at some kind of a universal explanation for many of these phenomenon and laws of these laws of human behavior are universally valid and they are valid in all historical eras and all cultures so as I said this is a way of replicating the scientific method where you talk about certain laws which are valid in all circumstances and these laws are used to predict the future as well predict in the future as well so these empirical facts exist apart from personal ideas and thoughts they are not thoughts they are not ideas they exist out there and we can just experience them as I said using our sense organs or special instruments that extend the senses like microscope microscopes or many other instruments so now let's talk about interpretivism which is a different paradigm of social science research so we have discussed positivism and we know that it is something that we do using surveys and experiments and all that and interpretivism is very different from that so it is the analysis of socially meaningful action through the direct detailed observation of people in natural settings so if you remember the ethnographic approach that would be one kind of an interpretivism where maybe through participant observation or otherwise you observe people directly in their natural settings in order to arrive at understanding and interpretations of how people create and maintain their social world that how people live their everyday life so interpretative social science is related to the field of hermeneutics so basically this is about a theory of meaning which originated in the 19th century and this word hermeneutics is derived from the Greek god Hermes who had the job of communicating the desires of the gods to mortals so in other words interpreting the desire of gods to the mortals so it literally means making the obscure planes so that is what interpretive social science is related to the philosophy of hermeneutics to the philosophy of interpreting it in obscure interpreting the obscure to make it plain so a lot of the humanities disciplines that use hermeneutics it emphasizes conducting a very close detailed reading of texts to acquire a profound deep understanding so one is supposed to have a very close detailed reading of the text and that text could be anything that could be people talking that could be print that could be electronic or any other things so we conduct a reading to discover deeper richer meanings that are embedded within the text each reader has his own subjective experience to the text so everyone has his own framework of experience to bring to the text and this reader brings his or her subjective experience to the text so this is dependent on the individual and on the context so it has several varieties it has the interpretive social sciences it is hermeneutics as I said we also talk of constructionism, ethnomethrology which I have discussed in another video cognitive, idealist, phenological, subjectivist and qualitative sociology so we call it qualitative because most interpretive researchers use participant observation and field research so the goal of interpretivism is to develop an understanding of social life and discover how people construct meaning in natural settings so the meaning is constructed it is not given so the interpretive researcher wants to learn what is meaningful or relevant to the people he is studying and how they experience everyday life so it is not something which is out there but what they make sense of so mobile phone might not be mobile phone for these people how is it relevant to them in their everyday life and how do they use it and how does it regulate their everyday life for example so very different from positivism which uses realist ontology and this ISS adopts a nominalist ontology and social reality is largely what people perceive it to be it exists as people experience it and assign meaning to it so social reality is not something which is out there but what people perceive it to be so it exists as people's experience so how do they experience and what meaning do they assign to it and that is why these researchers say that social reality is fluid and fragile so it differs from people to people because people construct it as they interact with others people construct social reality while they interact with others and this is very fluid and fragile it can change so that is the ontology of interpretive social science it is also constructionist in orientation because it assumes that people construct reality out there interactions and beliefs so reality is not something which is out there there is no inner essence that causes the reality but what people make sense of that or how do people construct that reality so instead of interconnected theories that we saw in positivism a theory here tells a story it describes and interprets how people conduct their daily lives so it may contain some of the social science concepts and generalizations but it does not depart dramatically from the lived experiences so what do people make sense of it so what do people who you are studying in particular context what do they make of it or what do they make of reality as you see it so that is more important so it sees features of specific context specific context is very important because that determines what meaning people assign to those facts or those realities as we would call them so the specific context is very important to understand the social meaning so evidence about social action cannot be isolated from the context or the meaning so whatever action you see a particular community taking it is what they see as what meaning they assign to it and what is the context in which it is happening is more important now we come to the last part of this discussion and it is about a very important concept which is on a critical social science and it is traced to the writings of Carl Marx and Sigmund Freud and also the later influences which includes many from the Frankfurt school which includes Theodore Adorno, Eric Fromm and Herbert Marcuse so let's define what is critical social science so it is a critical process of inquiry that goes beyond surface illusions to uncover the real structures in the material world so it is not just what we see as reality but what are the real structures so it's not also about what sense people make of it or how people interpret it but what are the real structures in the material world so a political economic approach would be one way of looking at it so that it can help people change the conditions and build a better world for themselves so the primary purpose of critical research is not simply to study the social world but also to change it so researchers conduct studies to critique and transform social relations by revealing the underlying sources of social control power relations and inequality so researchers conduct studies to critique these social relations so whether there are relations of domination or exploitation of such things so we are looking at what are the sources of this social control so for example many people would see media to be a source of social control as well and what are the power relations which are not obvious to the people in the community but a researcher would try and critique not just critique but also try and transform these social relations so it is best understood in the context of the empowerment of individuals so at one hand it shares the positivist researchers premise that there is an empirical reality which is independent of our perceptions and it also shares the interpretivist focus that we construct what we take to be reality from our subjective experiences so I think of reality in my own context based on my own experiences my cultural beliefs and social interactions but it goes beyond this premise of positivist and interpretivist researchers so it adopts a critical realist ontology so it's not just realist but it's a critical realist so if you remember the continuum between realism and nominalism so it's not a true realist but a critical realist because it sees reality not as just one layer something which we see in the empirical world but something which is real and something which is actual so theories and research, critical theories and research over time can help us understand what are these structures operating at the real level and what are the causal mechanisms so what are the mechanisms that generate and modify these structures for example what are these structures which allow this domination to continue and how that can be modified so our experiences of empirical reality are always theory or concept development so this is one of the assumptions of the critical social science so our theories and concepts, both common sense and science sensitize us to particular aspects of empirical reality so it tells us what is relevant and how do we categorize and divide its features so this is what the realist assumption is and we also know that subjective meaning is important because everybody has his or her own interpretation based on the social context and that is what shapes social relations but far from that reality that I spoke of in the earlier slide and the subjective meaning, the critical researcher probes the social situation and places them in a larger historical context and that is more important another important concept related to critical social science is the concept of bounded autonomy it suggests that free will, choices and decisions making are not unlimited they are within restricted boundaries and these are cultural or material boundaries so a person in that kind of a social setup can only make certain decisions which are bounded so he is not totally autonomous he is bounded by these structures of domination and exclusion and all that and a very very important concept of critical social science is that of false consciousness so it sees common sense as something which is false consciousness so what we regard as common sense is something that is false consciousness so people do not know what is right for them and they are often mistaken so a lot of times we assume all that domination to be something which is natural or we assume for example capitalist exploitation to be something which is natural but that is mistaken and that is what critical researchers suggest when they say that that is not real consciousness that is false consciousness because people are mistaken and they act against their own interests so our idea as researchers is to let them know about what is there in their real interest so objective reality lies between myth and illusion so one of the approaches of critical social science is explanatory critique so it begins with a premise that when we study social life we study both the thing and how people think or understand about the thing that we are studying so it is not just about the social life but how people think about that and also about the actual conditions and people's beliefs so they may not always match so what is reality and what is actuality I mean what people think to be true may not actually be so simple and there could be multiple layers to that so the critical social scientist is an activist in certain senses because it is a moral political activity that requires the researcher to commit to a value position so in favor of the dominator in favor of the exploiter and all that so it rejects the positivist value freedom that everything has to be value free no, they take sides so it is not about an empirical objective approach it also separates the good from the bad theory by putting theory into practice so if I put this theory into practice what is the outcome so explanations are valued when they help people understand the world and to take action that changes it so that is again a very important concept in critical social science so critical scientists often favor the historical comparative method and as I said that to look at the underlying conditions of domination is what they are trying to find out thank you for being in the discussion today