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The epistemological foundations of quantitative research qu1, Ariana…
The epistemological foundations of quantitative research
Quantitative Research
Concept
Systematic investigation of a topic related to a social phenomenon gathering quantifiable data and using statistical techniques to test if a hypothesis of study proposed is true or not.
Characteristics
Results are based on bigger sample sizes.
High reliability.
Focuses on numeric and invariable data.
World: Reality that can be empirically determined.
Positivism world view.
Epistemologies
Definition
Philosophy of knowledge.
Types
Post-positivism
Human knowledge is based on human conjectures.
Research can never be certain.
Experiential Realism
It's impossible to observe the world from an objective way only.
Observation involves an interaction of our bodies with the world.
Science is an activity that is based on this subject/object schema.
Pragmatism
Recommends mixed methods approach: quantitative and qualitative methods.
The meaning and the truth of any idea is a function of its practical outcomes.
Epistemologies underlying theory and practice
Positivism
Certain knowledge is based on natural phenomena.
Information: Derived from sensory experience and interpreted through reason and logic.
Valid knowledge is found only in posteriori knowledge.
Quantitative Research
Post-positivism
Critical Realism.
There is a reality independent of our thinking.
All observation is fallible or imperfect.
All theory is “revisable”.
Objective of science: Get information about reality.
Interpretivism
Researchers are able to interpret components of the study.
Incorporates human interest into a study.
Reality is socially constructed.
Focus is on meaning.
Used to group different approaches.
Doesn't accept the purely objectivist view of the world separately from consciousness.
Criticalism
Confronts methodologies that make affirmations of scientific objectivity.
Goal: Change limiting social conditions.
Includes the deep assessment and evaluation of society and culture.
Relates knowledge from the social sciences and the humanities to make structures.
Postmodernism
Reality cannot be conceived the same by everybody.
There is not probability for having objective knowledge.
Importance of subjective responses of people and communities.
Science is neither universal, nor the “paradigm of all true knowledge”.
Subjectivism
Mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience.
Subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law.
Ariana Lucía Valladares Carranza
