Interpretive Research Paradigm Pdf

The last chapter introduced interpretive research, or more specifically, interpretive case research. This chapter will explore other kinds of interpretive research. Recall that positivist or deductive methods, such as laboratory experiments and survey research, are those that are specifically intended for theory (or hypotheses) testing, while interpretive or inductive methods, such as action research and ethnography, are intended for theory building. Unlike a positivist method, where the researcher starts with a theory and tests theoretical postulates using empirical data, in interpretive methods, the researcher starts with data and tries to derive a theory about the phenomenon of interest from the observed data.The term “interpretive research” is often used loosely and synonymously with “qualitative research”, although the two concepts are quite different.

The Interconnection Between Interpretivist Paradigm And Qualitative Methods In Education

Interpretive research is a research paradigm (see Chapter 3) that is based on the assumption that social reality is not singular or objective, but is rather shaped by human experiences and social contexts (ontology), and is therefore best studied within its socio-historic context by reconciling the subjective interpretations of its various participants (epistemology). Because interpretive researchers view social reality as being embedded within and impossible to abstract from their social settings, they “interpret” the reality though a “sense-making” process rather than a hypothesis testing process.

This is in contrast to the positivist or functionalist paradigm that assumes that the reality is relatively independent of the context, can be abstracted from their contexts, and studied in a decomposable functional manner using objective techniques such as standardized measures. Whether a researcher should pursue interpretive or positivist research depends on paradigmatic considerations about the nature of the phenomenon under consideration and the best way to study it.However, qualitative versus quantitative research refers to empirical or data -oriented considerations about the type of data to collect and how to analyze them. Qualitative research relies mostly on non-numeric data, such as interviews and observations, in contrast to quantitative research which employs numeric data such as scores and metrics. Hence, qualitative research is not amenable to statistical procedures such as regression analysis, but is coded using techniques like content analysis.

Interpretive Research Paradigm Pdf Download

Sometimes, coded qualitative data is tabulated quantitatively as frequencies of codes, but this data is not statistically analyzed. Many puritan interpretive researchers reject this coding approach as a futile effort to seek consensus or objectivity in a social phenomenon which is essentially subjective.Although interpretive research tends to rely heavily on qualitative data, quantitative data may add more precision and clearer understanding of the phenomenon of interest than qualitative data. For example, Eisenhardt (1989), in her interpretive study of decision making n high-velocity firms (discussed in the previous chapter on case research), collected numeric data on how long it took each firm to make certain strategic decisions (which ranged from 1.5 months to 18 months), how many decision alternatives were considered for each decision, and surveyed her respondents to capture their perceptions of organizational conflict. Such numeric data helped her clearly distinguish the high-speed decision making firms from the low-speed decision makers, without relying on respondents’ subjective perceptions, which then allowed her to examine the number of decision alternatives considered by and the extent of conflict in high-speed versus low-speed firms. Interpretive research should attempt to collect both qualitative and quantitative data pertaining to their phenomenon of interest, and so should positivist research as well. Joint use of qualitative and quantitative data, often called “mixed-mode designs”, may lead to unique insights and are highly prized in the scientific community.Interpretive research has its roots in anthropology, sociology, psychology, linguistics, and semiotics, and has been available since the early 19 th century, long before positivist techniques were developed. Many positivist researchers view interpretive research as erroneous and biased, given the subjective nature of the qualitative data collection and interpretation process employed in such research.

Interpretive Research Paradigm Pdf Software

However, the failure of many positivist techniques to generate interesting insights or new knowledge have resulted in a resurgence of interest in interpretive research since the 1970’s, albeit with exacting methods and stringent criteria to ensure the reliability and validity of interpretive inferences. Distinctions from Positivist ResearchIn addition to fundamental paradigmatic differences in ontological and epistemological assumptions discussed above, interpretive and positivist research differ in several other ways.