G4alien's 365 & 1/4 的生活空間

Last week I have been reading methodological approaches and the definition of some philosophy due to the research methods. I found those philosophical theories very interesting, which explain many social structure and individual perspective. Although I would like to read into it and disclose my life views, it is also confusing and contradictive when I tried to decipher the ideas. The perspective from different researchers are different even they may be categorized in the same theory supporters. Yet, everyone has their own views to explain the circumstances and theories to frame their experience and form their thoughts towards life.

As Paul suggested, the point is that I need to find my stand to explain my research design and understand how I use them and what I have understood about the approaches that I adopted. According to my mixed methods in this virtual teamwork and networking research, critical realism is considered a safe explanation to describe my data analysis in qualitative and quantitative methods. Critical realism (the idea waiting to be discovered: any position that maintains that there exists an objectively knowable entity as a mental object and something that makes up awareness) is associated with positivism and constructivism; thus, qualitative and quantitative methodologies are considered appropriate within a critical realism framework (Healy & Perry, 2000). In other words, from a realist perspective, mixed methods are feasible to investigate the latent mechanisms that conduct actions and events. Methods such as case studies and unstructured or semi-structured in-depth interviews are applicable and suitable within the paradigm, as are statistical analyses (Bisman, 2002; Perry, Alizadeh, & Riege, 1997).

Also, I did some research on ontological and epistemological study. Due to my mixed methods on the data analysis approaches, I combined the ontological stand and epistemological approach to analyse and explain my data findings. Ontology in a simple sentence is to discover “what we know－knowledge” (what are the facts in the world) and epistemology looks into another aspect to discover “know-how” (how we perceive the world). For example, one knows that camera could take picture and one knows how to use camera to take pictures. It is very interesting to see the entity in different views and interpret it logically.

This week I start writing my final chapter: Discussion & Conclusion, which I think is the most difficult chapter so far. My literature review is still quite loose and incomplete. I only draft my other chapters as well. Paul is very positive and optimistic about my progress of thesis writing. We plan to finish and complete the thesis by April. Therefore, he believes that time should be enough for me to organise the structure and present my study in a logical order. It is better to make it right than make it fast. In this aspect, quality control is more important than the efficiency. Hopefully, I could finish my first draft of conclusion by mid January.


Reference:

Bisman, J. E. (2002, July). The critical realist paradigm as an approach to research in accounting. Poster presentation at the Accounting Association of Australian and New Zealand Annual Conference, Perth, Australia.

Healy, M., & Perry, C. (2000). Comprehensive criteria to judge validity and reliability of qualitative research within the realism paradigm. Qualitative Market Research – An International Journal, 3(3), 118-126.

Perry, C., Alizadeh, Y. & Riege, A. (1997). Qualitative methods in entrepreneurship research. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Small Enterprise Association Australia and New Zealand, Coffs Harbour, 21-23.