What Is Theory
TQuestion a. What kinds of theories are addressed in the article?
Answer: The article discusses mainly two types of research theory.one is quantitative (Positivistic) and the other is qualitative (Phenomenological). These theories provide necessary guideline to the researcher regarding how to design their research questions, select relevant data, interpret the data, and propose explanations of causes or influences. The quantitative approach follows systematic empirical investigation of social phenomena via statistical, mathematical or computational techniques. Quantitative research develops and employs mathematical models, theories and hypotheses pertaining to phenomena. The quantitative researcher asks a specific, narrow question and collects numerical data from participants to answer the question. Qualitative researcher, on the other hand, asks broad questions and collects word data from participants. The researcher looks for themes and describes the information in themes and patterns exclusive to that set of participants. But these two theories are different with regard to modeling the research procedures to do the above mention tasks. These theories provide necessary guideline to the researcher about how to understand complex and comprehensive things that cannot be pinned down. These Theories give different “lenses” to the researcher, through which they can look at complicated problems and social issues, focusing their attention on different aspects of the data and providing a framework within which to conduct their analysis.
Question b. How would you classify them?
Question c. The article takes up the concept of “triangulation.” What does it mean and for what purpose could it be used?
Question d. How would you characterize the rhetoric and illustrative means that are used to describe a ‘Theory’ under the quantitative (Positivistic) research paradigm?
Answer: As we can see , some of the characteristics of quantitative research paradigm already discussed
Answer: The article discusses mainly two types of research theory.one is quantitative (Positivistic) and the other is qualitative (Phenomenological). These theories provide necessary guideline to the researcher regarding how to design their research questions, select relevant data, interpret the data, and propose explanations of causes or influences. The quantitative approach follows systematic empirical investigation of social phenomena via statistical, mathematical or computational techniques. Quantitative research develops and employs mathematical models, theories and hypotheses pertaining to phenomena. The quantitative researcher asks a specific, narrow question and collects numerical data from participants to answer the question. Qualitative researcher, on the other hand, asks broad questions and collects word data from participants. The researcher looks for themes and describes the information in themes and patterns exclusive to that set of participants. But these two theories are different with regard to modeling the research procedures to do the above mention tasks. These theories provide necessary guideline to the researcher about how to understand complex and comprehensive things that cannot be pinned down. These Theories give different “lenses” to the researcher, through which they can look at complicated problems and social issues, focusing their attention on different aspects of the data and providing a framework within which to conduct their analysis.
Question b. How would you classify them?
Question c. The article takes up the concept of “triangulation.” What does it mean and for what purpose could it be used?
Question d. How would you characterize the rhetoric and illustrative means that are used to describe a ‘Theory’ under the quantitative (Positivistic) research paradigm?
Answer: As we can see , some of the characteristics of quantitative research paradigm already discussed
References: 1. http://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a949 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_research