The Pros And Cons Of Epistemology

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Every research project provides a link between a paradigm, epistemology, theoretical perspective, and research practice. A paradigm is identified in any school of thought – the integrated worldviews held by researchers and people in general that determine how these individuals perceive and attempt to comprehend truth (Fitzpatrick, Sanders, & Worthen, 2003). Furthermore, a paradigm includes an epistemological belief as well as an ontological belief that, when combined together, govern perceptions and choices made in the pursuit of scientific truth. In practice, individuals’ epistemological beliefs determine how they think knowledge or truth can be comprehended, what problems – if any – are associated with various views of pursuing and presenting knowledge and what role researchers play in its discovery (Robson, 2002). Different epistemologies offer different views of researchers’ relationships with their object of inquiry.
When it comes to ontology, it is the theory of reality or existence (Crotty, 1998). For example, researcher’s ontological beliefs determine not only how they think about reality, but what exists for real …show more content…

This does not exclude a quantitative approach being associated with a post-positivist approach. In contrast, for a researcher who favors interpretive, knowledge is a matter of interpretation (Schutt, 2009) so that the quest for understanding the complex world of lived experience demands that the researcher interact with the research objects/participants to get the viewpoint. The investigator favored a post-positivist approach since he believes that human knowledge can be challenged and modified in light of further investigation. Following is a description of the methodology that was followed for this

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