Why use positivist research

Positivist prefer scientific quantitative methods, while Interpretivists prefer humanistic qualitative methods. This post provides a very brief overview of the two. If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Theory and Methods Revision Bundle — specifically designed to get students through the theory and methods sections of A level sociology papers 1 and 3.

Links to more detailed posts on Positivism and Social Action Theory are embedded in the text above. Other posts you might like include:. Positivism in Social Research. Links to all of my research methods posts can be found at my main research methods page. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. This articles deals with the third paradigm, namely Positivism. The positivist paradigm of exploring social reality is based on the idea that one can best gain an understanding of human behaviour through observation and reason.

Stated differently, only objective, observable facts can be the basis for science. According to the positivist paradigm true knowledge is based on experience of senses and can be obtained by observation and experiment. Positivist thinkers lean strongly on determinism, empiricism, parsimony and generality.

Knowledge stems from human experience. Furthermore, the researcher is seen as being independent from the study and follows a deductive approach. The researcher concentrates on facts rather than human interests, making this approach a deductive one.

With these assumptions of science, the ultimate goal is to integrate and systematise findings into a meaningful pattern or theory which is regarded as tentative and not the ultimate truth. Theory is subject to revision or modification as new evidence is found. They think of science as boring, cut-and-dry, and they think of the scientist as narrow-minded and esoteric the ultimate nerd — think of the humorous but nonetheless mad scientist in the Back to the Future movies, for instance. A lot of our stereotypes about science come from a period where science was dominated by a particular philosophy — positivism — that tended to support some of these views.

Here, I want to suggest no matter what the movie industry may think that science has moved on in its thinking into an era of post-positivism where many of those stereotypes of the scientist no longer hold up. It is a position that holds that the goal of knowledge is simply to describe the phenomena that we experience.

The purpose of science is simply to stick to what we can observe and measure. Knowledge of anything beyond that, a positivist would hold, is impossible. When I think of positivism and the related philosophy of logical positivism I think of the behaviorists in midth Century psychology. In a positivist view of the world, science was seen as the way to get at truth, to understand the world well enough so that we might predict and control it.

The world and the universe were deterministic — they operated by laws of cause and effect that we could discern if we applied the unique approach of the scientific method. Science was largely a mechanistic or mechanical affair. We use deductive reasoning to postulate theories that we can test. The positivist believed in empiricism — the idea that observation and measurement was the core of the scientific endeavor.

The key approach of the scientific method is the experiment, the attempt to discern natural laws through direct manipulation and observation.

OK, I am exaggerating the positivist position although you may be amazed at how close to this some of them actually came in order to make a point. Things have changed in our views of science since the middle part of the 20th century.

Probably the most important has been our shift away from positivism into what we term post-positivism. A post-positivist might begin by recognizing that the way scientists think and work and the way we think in our everyday life are not distinctly different. The essential guide to doing your research project. London: Sage publications. Olsen, W. Triangulation in social research: Qualitative and quantitative methods can really be mixed. Rossi, P. Evaluation: A systematic approach, 7th ed.

Terre Blanche, M. Research in practice: Applied methods for the social sciences 2nd ed. Cape Town: UCT. Waismann, F. In Humanities, Social Science and Law. Resource Type: Springer eBooks. Part 1 Before we go into discussing Positivism v. Kinsler, P. How to be causal. Phy,32 6 , Macionis, J.