Positivism And Interpretivism Essay

In the choice of research methodology, the researchers first have to choose one of the research paradigms like positivism, interpretivism, and pragmatism. Every research approach must follow the way of investigation such as epistemology, ontology, and axiology (Maxwell, 2005) as the essence of research philosophy. Therefore, I would like to follow the viewpoint of pragmatism as my research approach that should overcome some disadvantageous position of positivism and interpretivism, discussed below-
Positivism refers to the emphasis on scientific observation as the way to see and understands the reality (Antwi & Hamza, 2015; Mack, 2010; Gray, n.d.) including statistical measurement to gain the factual knowledge about nature and natural phenomena (Edirisingha, 2012). These characteristics of positivism make the researchers independent (Dudovskiy, 2016) with minimal interactions with participants (Wilson, 2010) and limit to the survey method of data collection in observing empirical phenomena (Antwi & Hamza, 2015) rather than introspection (Byrne, 2005). The essence of axiology in positivism, as the researchers' judgment about the phenomena that is to be observed (Saunders et al., 2012), involves inquirer's value–free assessment (Li, 2016). In epistemology, it includes various sources …show more content…
The research about the social reality needs to be studied with mixed philosophical assumptions to draw multidimensional findings through pragmatism ( Simmon, n.d., Brannen, n.d.), as the present day is called multidisciplinary era ( Miller, 1981; Raine, et al. 2014 ). The pragmatism is the approach, which concentrates positivist and interpretive view within a single study in accordance with the purpose of research (Dudovskiy,