Back to Blog
Qualitative data method map5/18/2023 ![]() In addition, we have developed a free app to accompany the book and this enables novice researcher to quickly develop a comprehensive justification of their particular research design in an interactive way. We have road tested this approach with many colleagues and students to ensure that it is clear and concise. Central to the revised text is the methods map (see Chapter 4), which sets out a logical process for researchers to articulate their position in relation to five key aspects of their research philosophy. For this reason, the second edition features some relatively minor changes to many chapters and a complete rewrite of our account of research philosophy. ![]() Despite positive feedback on many aspects of the first edition from both students and colleagues, we were however convinced that we could improve in relation to ‘the ologies’. This was achieved at a pace which seemed frankly ridiculous but which produced a remarkably coherent guide for novice researchers. We are indebted to our colleagues for their help in delivering on the first of these two problems in the first edition of the book. Here we wanted to offer a structured approach to familiarising yourself with the terminology and to demonstrate how a nested set of descriptions builds towards a coherent, comprehensive and consistent articulation of your research paradigm. The second problem we wanted to tackle related to what we often refer to as ‘the ologies’. The first was to provide something that guides novice researchers through the whole process from identifying a topic to the writing up of findings via engagement with the literature and a brief overview of both qualitative and quantitative techniques. We set out to produce a text that dealt with two problems. We once experienced similar difficulties and empathise with the confusion and lack of confidence that flows from being unclear whether you have really understood terms such as methodology, ontology or epistemology. There is no single ‘right’ way to undertake research, but there are distinct traditions, each of which tends to operate with its own, internally consistent, set of choices.Īfter many years of working with undergraduate, postgraduate and research students we recognise only too well the struggles that they often experience wrestling with the somewhat strange and seemingly obtuse language used to describe research philosophy. For us, a comprehensive articulation of a research design draws together five layers of interlocking choices that you, the researcher, should make when specifying how you plan to execute your research. Collectively, these positions will define what we refer to as a research paradigm (see Figure 1: Methods Map). Business and Management sits within the broader context of the social sciences, and this chapter offers a guide to the standard philosophical positions required to specify the particular form of research you plan to undertake. The befuddlement caused by a range of new terminology relating to the philosophy of knowledge is unnecessary when all that you are trying to achieve is some clarity over the status of any knowledge claims you make in your study. ![]() For no apparent reason, research philosophy tends to send dissertation students into a mild panic. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |