Chapter 3: Thinking about methods (Summary)
• Everyday research skills. Applying life skills and experience to research.
• Families, approaches and techniques. Alternative approaches to thinking about research methods.
Research families
• Quantitative or Qualitative
• Deskwork or Fieldwork
In this subsection we will consider two alternative research dichotomies: qualitative/quantitative and deskwork/fieldwork. Qualitative or quantitative?
Quantitative research is empirical research where the data are in the form of numbers. Qualitative research is empirical research where the data are not in the form of numbers.







Social research paradigms: some definitions
Positivism: It is possible to capture ‘reality’ through the use of research instruments such as experiments and
questionnaires. The aims of positivist research are to offer explanations leading to control and predictability. Positivism has been a very predominant way of knowing the social world.
Post-positivism: Post-positivists argue that we can only know social reality imperfectly and probabilistically. While objectivity remains an ideal, there is an increased use of qualitative techniques in order to ‘check’ the validity of findings. ‘Post-positivism holds that only partially objective accounts of the world can be produced, for all methods for examining such
accounts are flawed’.


Interpretivism: Interpretivist approaches to social research see interpretations of the social world as culturally derived and historically situated. Interpretivism is often linked to the work of Weber, who suggested that the social sciences are concerned with verstehen (understanding). This is compared to erklaren (explaining), which forms the basis of seeking causal explanations and is the hallmark of the natural sciences.
Critical: Critical social paradigms critique both positivism and interpretivism as ways of understanding the social world.
Postmodern: The era of big narratives and theories is over: locally, temporally and situationally limited narratives are now required’. It sticks to practical life.
Research approaches
• Action research. Using your research project to study and change something you care about.
• Case studies. Focusing your research project on a particular example or examples.
• Experiments. Testing your research hypotheses through controlled studies.
• Surveys. Collecting data from people, materials and artefacts.

Research techniques
• Documents
• Interviews
• Observations
• Questionnaires