In this course you will be introduced to the basic ideas behind the qualitative research in social science. You will learn about data collection, description, analysis and interpretation in qualitative research. Qualitative research often involves an iterative process. We will focus on the ingredients required for this process: data collection and analysis. You won't learn how to use qualitative methods by just watching video's, so we put much stress on collecting data through observation and interviewing and on analysing and interpreting the collected data in other assignments. Obviously, the most important concepts in qualitative research will be discussed, just as we will discuss quality criteria, good practices, ethics, writing some methods of analysis, and mixing methods. We hope to take away some prejudice, and enthuse many students for qualitative research.
1.4 Epistemology
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From the course by University of Amsterdam
Qualitative Research Methods
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University of Amsterdam
469 ratings
Course 2 of 5 in the Specialization Methods and Statistics in Social Sciences
From the lesson
Philosophy of Qualitative Research
Welcome to the first week of the course. We start with an introduction, followed by two lessons on the Philosophy of Qualitative Research.
Meet the Instructors
Gerben MoermanDr.
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
After discussing ontology, now it's time to discuss epistemology,
and again, we are talking about an elephant.
This elephant is about the question, what is knowledge and
how do we actually gain knowledge?
So if there's a reality out there,
as we would discuss in ontology, we now pose the second question and
the second question is, how can we understand reality?
Or can we understand reality or do we need to measure reality?
And usually in text books, there's a distinction made between
either a positive view or a more interpretivist view.
And this is one way of putting it.
The core of it at least is that we can apply natural science methods
to social sciences, and it starts with the pretty empiricist point of view.
Which means all the knowledge we gain, we gain it through the senses.
So everything should be observable and measurable.
A second element of positivism is that it's usually deductivist
which means that we are testing theories and I will explain a bit about that later.
But some would say that positivism also means inductivist.
So, its focused on theory building, and
there are different strands of positivism, logical positivism.
One is mainly focusing on theory building, inductively, whereas hypothetical
deductivists, positivists are focusing much more on deductivism.
A fourth element of positivism is the focus on objectivity or
at least value free researcher.
As a researcher you do not try to pose your subjective view of the world,
no, you try to establish an objective view of the world.
And then lastly.
But related is that there is a huge distinction between
scientific and normative statements.
So, as scientists,
we try to do scientific statements rather than normative statements.
Positivism in quality research is quite often used not only
as a label to apply to these elements of positivism.
But it's very often used as a terrible nickname.
Actually, you can curse someone saying oh, that's quite positivist.
And people wouldn't like that.
No one calls him or herself a positivist in qualitative research.
So it has quite a negative connotation.
Now the other view on epistemology is interpretivist epistemology.
When people discuss this interpretivist epistemology,
usually people would quote Schutz saying something about
people are not atoms, nor are people billiard balls.
So, when I hit you, you wouldn't react like a billiard ball.
No, you would use your meaning.
And this is what Schutz said.
Social reality has a specific meaning and
relevance structure for the beings living, acting, and thinking within it.
So, if I push you, you will act different from other people and why?
Well because the meaning you give to that little push is different and every time I
push you and when I push you smilingly or very angrily, there's a huge differences.
People interpret the world out there.
They're not atoms.
They're not billiard balls.
In an interpretivist epistemology the focus lies with the meaning of social
action, it lies with Verstehen in Weber's words,
trying to understand subjectively and that's also the last point.
The actor's perspective, a subjective reality.
An interpretivist tries to see the world
from the eyes of the researched, or the people in the study.
This is a nice dichotomy, but as you can see, way too simple.
Because, in practice, in science, we use different dimensions.
We use positivism versus interpretivism as a shortcut.
But if we just create some more dimensions,
we can see one dimension is objectivity versus subjectivity.
Or some would say,
as objectivity in itself is a goal rather than something we can accomplish.
Intersubjectivity versus subjectivity, now that's one way of looking at knowledge.
How do we get at knowledge?
Objectively, intersubjectively or subjectively, how do we gain knowledge?
Well through verstehen.
Understanding from within, trying to get a subjective reality,
trying to get into the meaning people attach to different actions.
Or through explanation.
A leads to B, and B leads to C.
Something like that.
So causality, and what is the cause of what.
And we can see a dimension here.
Different views on how do we gain knowledge.
A third dimension can be this dimension.
How do we get knowledge?
By verification.
Every time we see a white swan we would say there's another white swan.
It helps us create the theory that all swans are white.
And in falsification we try to test that theory.
Now the fourth dimension, and
now you see that this image, this graph, becomes impossible.
The fourth dimension is empirical, a focus on the senses,
focus on observing empirically versus
rational or the idea that we have to sit down and ponder and
wonder about social reality and we have to theorize rather than observe.
Now as you can see this is an impossible graph.
This is just another simplification again,
because we could add more dimensions, more ways of knowing.
Every research is somewhere in between.
In every research,
Verstehen is taking place, as well explanation is taking place.
So we cannot put, Positivism in either one of these corners.
We cannot put interpretivism in either one of these corners.
It's way too complex because every positivist does a little verification and
a little falsification, probably.
And there's quite some positivist research on subjective meaning.
And every researcher doing empirical research,
whether positivist or interpretivist, is somewhere in this corner.
So again, this is a simplification.
But at least it's way more complex than using this very simple dichotomy.
Now, falsification.
If we see one white swan, we would say, okay, there's one white swan.
If we see another white swan, we would say, okay, maybe all swans are white.
And then if you have seen several white swans, you can say,
well, every swan is white.
Now, that is verification, and then falsification
is not looking the other way when a black swan [SOUND] moves in.
Because, in falsification, the idea of Popper and
others was that, in science, you try to test a theory.
So you say all swans are white, and assume as a black swan swims in
we would ring the bells of victory because our theory is refuted.
This is one, just one, dimension of epistemology.
How do we get our knowledge?
Well, probably through falsification.
But probably also in many other ways.
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