Research
Methodologies
Dr Carmen Oltmann
What is research?
Comes from an old French word
recerchier
“to investigate thoroughly”
What types of research can you
think of?
What types of research have you
done during your BPharm?
https://www.slideshare.net/naveeddil/2-types-of-research
One classification is:
Quantitative research
Qualitative research
Mixed methods – a mixture of both
Quantitative research:
- usually involves collecting and
converting data into numerical
form
- Involves using statistical analyses,
and coming to conclusions
- Usually involves hypotheses: null
and/or alternative
- Often looking for cause and effect
- Objectivity is important
- Closed system: every attempt is
made to reduce and limit change
and variation – both externally
and internally. Variables are
controlled e.g. in a laboratory
- Mainly involves deductive
reasoning, using probability, using
a representative sample, and
making inferences and
generalizing.
Qualitative research:
- Usually involves paradigms that
emphasise the socially
constructed nature of reality
- Does not normally involve
numerical data
- Not testing hypotheses but
answering research questions
- Not looking for cause and effect.
Looking for experiences,
mechanisms, relationships…
Qualitative research continued…
- Interested in gaining
understanding of people’s
experiences, not in obtaining
information which can be
generalized to other larger
groups.
- Context is important
- Objectivity is impossible. The
researcher affects the research
- Open system: impossible to control
variables because done in the real
world.
- Process is mainly inductive i.e.
develop a theory or look for a
pattern of meaning on the basis of
the data collected. Not interested
in generalising, or in probability
Mixed methods:
When both quantitative and
qualitative methods are used in the
research
In Qualitative research the
research paradigm (also known as
the research philosophy) is really
important.
It determines how the researcher
designs the research, how the
research is done, what assumptions
are made about what “reality”
and “knowledge” are
It’s like looking at the world through
different lenses….
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Kuhn (1962) wrote the following about
research paradigms: “a research
paradigm is the set of common beliefs
and agreements shared between
scientists about how problems should
be understood and addressed”.
Kuhn T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions. University of Chicago Press
Research paradigms are
characterised through their:
- Ontology,
- Epistemology, and
- Methodology
Ontology: addresses the question
‘What is reality, and how can we
understand reality?’
In positivism researchers believe
there is a single reality or truth
which can be measured and
known e.g. by doing experiments
in closed systems. Natural scientists
usually use this paradigm.
Critics of the positivist approach argue
that:
1. context is critical and cannot be
ignored,
2. closed systems are ‘artificially closed’,
3. that the researcher has an effect on
the outcomes, and
4. challenge the idea of ‘truth’, and
asks: ‘truth according to whom, and
in what context’?
Epistemology: addresses the
question: ‘what is valid knowledge,
and how can we obtain the
knowledge?’
- Do we think we are part of the
knowledge, or external to it?
- Can we be objective?
Methodology: addresses the
question: ‘how do we go about
finding out knowledge i.e. doing
your research?’