concepts of paradigm and approaches in social sciences

1. Philosophy of social sciences
Resource Person
Javeria Nazeer

2. Paradigm
 System of thinking
 Set of propositions that explains how the world is perceived
 Broad theoretical formulations
 Help in obtaining hypotheses
 Set of beliefs, values & techniques shared by scientific
community
 Includes basic assumptions, important questions to be
answered, research techniques to be used

3. Paradigm
 Describing something as a ‘research paradigm’ means that it
is an established model, accepted by a substantial number of
people in a research community. For example, it could be
argued that positivism and interpretivism are (rival) paradigms
of research within sociology. Each academic discipline may
have its own research paradigms.

4. Approach
 A ‘research approach’ has a less evaluative meaning: it simply
refers to a way of doing research, which may or may not be
accepted by a significant proportion of a research community.
For example, ethnomethodology, grounded theory, narrative
analysis and auto-ethnography could all be described as
different research approaches. 'Approaches' could refer to
designs, methods of data collection or analysis.

5. Three major paradigms
 Positivism……………………………………Auguste Comte & Emily
Durkheim
 Interpretivism………………………………Vicco, Dilthery & Weber
 Critical………………………………………Karl Marx

6. Positivism
 Oldest Paradigm
 Reality is out there. Independent of human consciousness
 Natural and unchangeable laws
 Deductive
 General to specific
 Abstract to concrete

7. Interpretivism/Anti-Positivism
 Anti-positivism
 Reality is not there, but in the mind of people based on the
definition people attach to it.
 Subjective
 Specific to general
 Concrete to abstract
 Represents reality symbolically in descriptive form

8. Critical
 Reality is created by powerful people
 They manipulate conditions and brain wash others to perceive
things the way they want them to
 To serve the needs of the powerful

10. Differentiation between Model and
Theory(Paradigm)
Model
 Model is a verbal or visual
representation of a concept
 Model is used to simplify
things and is more practical
 Model simplify a concept
and most of time its
tangible
Theory
 Theory is a conceptual
framework of an idea
 Theory is used to explain
things and is less practical
 Theory explains a
phenomenon and is more
intangible

11. Philosophical grounds of Theory
 Ontology
 Epistemology
 Methodology
 Axiology

12. Ontology
 What is knowable?
 Is there a real world independent of our knowledge?

13. Ontology
 Ontology is the starting point of all research, after which one’s
epistemological and methodological positions logically follow. A
dictionary definition of the term may describe it as the image of
social reality upon which a theory is based.
 Norman Blaikie offers a fuller definition, suggesting that ontological
claims are “claims and assumptions that are made about the nature of
social reality, claims about what exists, what it looks like, what units
make it up and how these units interact with each other.
 In short, ontological assumptions are concerned with what we believe
constitutes social reality” (Blaikie, 2000, p. 8)

14. Epistemology
 How knowledge is generated or created?
 How relation between social phenomenon is identified?
 School of thoughts
 Idealists
 Empiricists
 realists

15. Epistemology
 Epistemology, one of the core branches of philosophy, is concerned with the
theory of knowledge, especially in regard to its methods, validation and the
possible ways of gaining knowledge of social reality, whatever it is
understood to be.
 In short, claims about how what is assumed to exist can be known (Blaikie,
2000, p. 8).
 Derived from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (reason),
epistemology focuses on the knowledge-gathering process and is concerned
with developing new models or theories that are better than competing
models and theories. Knowledge, and the ways of discovering it, is not static,
but forever changing. When reflecting on theories, and concepts in general,
researchers need to reflect on the assumptions on which they are based and
where they originate from in the first place.

16. Methodology
 Methodology refers to general principles which underline
how we investigate the social world and how we
demonstrate that the knowledge generated is valid.
 Research methods refers to the more practical issues of
choosing an appropriate research design – perhaps an
experiment or a survey – to answer a research question,
and then designing instruments to generate data.

17. Axiology
 About values and ethics
 Axiology is a branch of philosophy that studies
judgements about the value. Specifically, axiology is
engaged with assessment of the role of researcher’s own
value on all stages of the research process.
 In simple terms, axiology focuses on what do you value in
your research. This is important because your values affect
how you conduct your research and what do you value in
your research findings.

18. Philosophical Alignment
 The researcher is seeking to maximize the overlap between
ontological, epistemological and axiological positions
 Philosophical alignment leads to philosophical trinity:
 The alignment between the researcher’s belief system, the
research paradigm and research methodology

19. What paradigm tells us?
 The choice of a particular "paradigm" normally points to a
particular "approach", which usually implies the adoption of
specific "methods", which in turn suggest the use of specific
data generation techniques and interpretations.

20. What paradigm tells us?
 Research paradigm refers to mainly ontological and
epistemological assumptions while research approach (or
strategy) refers to whether an inductive, deductive or mixed
strategy is used by researcher. Adopting any mix of
paradigmatic position with research approach depends on the
question in hand. Of course some combinations will be
mutually exclusive.