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Doing Research in the Real World

Student resources, chapter 7: research design: qualitative methods.

Practising ethical qualitative research
Types of Qualitative Data
Increasing validity in qualitative research

Chapter 7. Ethics

The “fly on the wall” approach in anthropology, still taught as an antidote to the influences of one’s subjectivity on the research process, only obscures the fact that even those who try to be insects are, at the very least, already influencing the social environment in which they conduct their fieldwork and, more important, are already committing themselves to a very clear moral and political position—that of letting things remain as they are, or leaving the status quo untouched. Neutrality is impossible—or better still, neutrality may work for the maintenance of privileges, but it does not work for all. Many forms of oppression, exclusion, and death continue to be perpetrated in the name of objectivity and detachment. —Joȃo Helios Costa Vargas, Catching Hell in the City of Angels

Introduction

Joȃo Helios Costa Vargas spent two years living in South Central Los Angeles, a region of predominantly Black neighborhoods known for high rates of poverty, crime, and violence. When recounting the findings of his ethnographic research, he refused to write “neutrally.” As a human being, he viewed the prospect of writing as if he were merely “a fly on the wall” distasteful if not unethical. He wanted to name oppression outright. To testify to the outrages and injustices he saw perpetrated against those living in these communities by those with power—the police, school authorities, the public at large. And so he did, and his book is both more powerful and more honest for that. His choice is both an example of reflexivity (see chapter 6) and an example of ethics in practice. In this chapter, we explore a great many ethical considerations made by qualitative researchers and argue that being ethical is a constant and ongoing responsibility for any researcher and particularly for those involved in social science. Unlike other fields of science, the lines between doing right and doing wrong are sometimes hard to distinguish, a situation that puts tremendous pressure on every qualitative researcher to consider ethics all the time .

This is a very important chapter and should not be overlooked. As a practical matter, it should also be read closely with chapters 6 and 8. Because qualitative researchers deal with people and the social world, it is imperative they develop and adhere to a strong ethical code for conducting research in a way that does not harm. There are legal requirements and guidelines for doing so (see chapter 8), but these requirements should not be considered synonymous with the ethical code required of us. Each researcher must constantly interrogate every aspect of their research—from research question to design to sample through analysis and presentation—to ensure that a minimum of harm (ideally, zero harm) is caused. Because each research project is unique, the standards of care for each study are unique. Part of being a professional researcher is carrying this code in one’s heart, being constantly attentive to what is required under particular circumstances. Chapter 7 provides various research scenarios and asks readers to weigh in on the suitability and appropriateness of the research. If done in a class setting, it will become obvious fairly quickly that there are often no absolutely correct answers, as different people find different aspects of the scenarios of greatest importance. Minimizing the harm in one area may require possible harm in another. Being attentive to all the ethical aspects of one’s research and making the best judgments one can clearly and consciously are integral parts of being a good researcher.

Being an Ethical Researcher

Being a competent qualitative researcher means being reflective (chapter 6) and being ethical. In the next chapter, we will explore the regulatory requirements of ethical practice, but it is important to recognize that being ethical goes well beyond following the rules and regulations. Born from an epistemological perspective (chapter 3) that places value on the diversity of meanings and unique perspectives of the humans we study, qualitative researchers’ ethics encompass truthfully and generously reporting those meanings and perspectives, being attentive to what people tell and show us, and honestly appraising the harm and efficacy of what we report. The rules and regulations guiding qualitative research tend to focus on the importance of informed consent and the general balancing of potential benefits against likely harms. However, our duties to those with whom we interact go well beyond these aspects of our research. Further, because each study is unique and involves relationships between a researcher and research “subjects,” proceeding ethically requires constant attention and deliberation. One might make dozens of decisions during the research process that have ethical implications. It is not permissible to stop thinking about ethics after you have submitted your application for institutional review board (IRB) review (more on this process in chapter 8) or once you have received permission to proceed with your study: “Ethics are more than a set of principles or abstract rules that sit as an overarching entity guiding our research.… Ethics exist in our actions and in our way of doing and practicing our research; we perceive ethics to be always in progress, never to be taken for granted, flexible, and responsive to change” ( Davies and Dodd 2002:281 ).

Reviewing agencies such as IRBs will not scrutinize all the ethical decisions you need to make throughout your research process. Only you can do this. It is thus vitally important that you develop your sense of ethics as part of your identity as a researcher. Being reflective can help, as you are more likely to identify and acknowledge and confront ethical issues if you are paying attention to the process.

This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part walks you through the research process, highlighting a variety of places where ethical issues may emerge. The second part presents several ethical scenarios. I encourage you to talk through these with a friend or colleagues from class. You may find as you do so that you disagree on what the “correct” ethical decision is. This is absolutely normal and an important lesson. There are many “gray” areas in ethical consideration where there is no clear right or wrong answer. Sometimes there are “least bad” courses of action. Being ethical does not always means doing the right thing—it simply means trying to find the right thing to do and being able to justify the decisions you make.

Part 1: Ethical Issues throughout the Course of the Study

Research design.

Many of the rules and regulations around conducting qualitative research focus on the research design. For example, institutional review boards routinely ask you to justify your sample, while including members of vulnerable populations (e.g., children) in the study will trigger a heightened review. In chapter 8, we will look more closely at the formal requirements, but before getting there, we need to take a step back and think about the study design more generally. Why is this study being conducted in the first place? If human subjects are involved (this is the aspect that triggers formal review), any study is going to affect them to some extent. The impact on the humans we study could be quite minimal, as in the case of unobtrusive observations in which no personal information is recorded. Or it could be substantial, as in the case where people are asked very personal and potentially “triggering” questions about a harmful phenomenon. Or it could be simply the inconvenience of being bothered by a nosy researcher. Is your study worth the bother? Recognize that the advantages of a successful study accrue to you in the first place (completing your degree requirements, publishing an article, etc.) and secondarily contribute to collective knowledge. Make sure that that secondary contribution is really worth it. This may require you to do enough foundational research to ensure that what you are doing is truly novel and worth the expense.

Once you have determined that, yes, it is worth doing this study because we don’t yet know the answer to the research questions you’ve posed and those questions are good questions to ask, you need to consider whether this is the best and least harmful way to answer those questions. Balance the contributions to knowledge and the potential harm to humans posed by the research. Sometimes, the knowledge is so important that we are willing to lean a little harder on our research subjects, causing them a bit more discomfort or potential harm than we would be willing to do for a study of less importance. To make this kind of calculation, you have to be very honest about the importance of your work, another aspect of reflexivity (chapter 6). You also have to think about your research subjects honestly and the power they have to protect themselves from your intrusion. Poor people often get studied more often than rich people because they have less power to protect themselves from unwanted intrusions on their privacy. Designing a study around easy-to-access people is an ethical decision. Sometimes it is the right decision, sometimes not.

Just as you have to consider your sample in terms of power and the ability of some groups to hide from your scrutiny, you also have to consider your sample in terms of who gets to be included and what the implications of exclusion are on our knowledge. Medical studies that exclude certain hard-to-reach populations out of convenience are poorer for that exclusion. You want to be very clear about stating and justifying both your inclusion criteria and your exclusion criteria. Inclusion criteria are those characteristics your research subjects must have in order to participate in the study. Being of adult age is a common inclusion criterion. Exclusion criteria are those characteristics that would disqualify people from being part of your study. These are established to protect potential participants, as in the case where those not born in the United States are excluded from a study that observes potential criminal behavior so as to protect them from deportation orders and reporting mandates. On the other hand, by excluding this group of people, you have limited their insights and perspectives from being heard.

Data Collection

Once you have designed your study in an ethical manner, you will have to find the people to match your inclusion criteria and invite them to participate. In most cases, you cannot ethically collect data without permission. This permission must often be in writing, and there are formal rules about what this writing looks like, which will be fully described in chapter 8. What about situations where you are simply observing behavior? If this is in a private setting, you will still need to get permission as well as access to the site. Who is giving you access to the site? This, too, raises ethical considerations. Is this a person with power (e.g., an employer) such that their permission may influence employees’ consent to be included in the study? If a principal of a high school allows you to observe teachers teach, does it matter that there is a lawsuit pending against the principal for unlawful terminations of various teachers? Yes, it does! You must consider how you and your research may be implicated in ongoing workplace issues. Ethics come into play even in public settings, especially in cases where the people being observed have little choice but to act in public (e.g., a community pool during a heatwave).

One of the obvious harms that can be created by a nosy researcher other than inconvenience and bother is the breaching of confidential statements or publications of private reflections and actions. You may think you are doing enough to protect your research subjects from harm by keeping what you learn anonymous (e.g., using pseudonyms or reporting only aggregate group data—e.g., “community pool members were rowdy”), but anonymity is easily breached. Even when no “identifiable information” is collected, the risk of being able to attribute data to particular individuals is never nonexistent. Formal rules and regulations specify in great detail various levels of anonymity and confidentiality permitted (see table 7.1). The bottom line is that we have to act as if what we write of people we observe and talk to may be individually identified (however unlikely) and consider what harm would occur to those people when we publish our research. This might necessitate multiple case sites to protect our subjects from identification (e.g., three community pools rather than just one) or even rethinking the kinds of questions we ask, refraining from pushing our interview subjects to address supplemental questions (those that are not directly tied to our research questions) that might cause them harm or embarrassment to them if they were identified.

Table 7.1. Anonymous and Confidential Data, A Vocabulary

Another aspect of gaining permission is deciding how much information about the study to provide in advance. Again, there are formal rules that require honesty, simplicity, and clarity when explaining the research study. The language must be understood by the particular research subjects. If one is doing research with children, the language describing the study is going to necessarily be different than if one is explaining the research study to adults. If one is doing research with nonnative English speakers, the language should be in the native language as well. There are many times, however, when these simple rules fail to take into account the research design’s requirements. Some researchers, especially psychologists, employ a certain level of deception in their research design, as stating honestly what the study is about would undercut the value of the findings. Accurate information is sometimes not possible without deception. When this is the case, reviewing agencies can make exceptions to the rule of fully informed consent so long as the deception is minimal and poses no harm and there is some debriefing after the fact (as in an experiment in which the full study is explained as soon as the experiment ends). There are other times, however, when researchers accurately describe the general purpose and goal of the study but fail to mention details that, had the subjects known in advance, they might have withheld their consent. This might be the case, for example, where a powerful CEO is told that he is taking part in a study of power dynamics at large corporations when in fact the study is also focused on gender imbalances and male CEOs’ biases toward women in leadership. The simple explanation was not deceptive, but the CEO may have decided to opt out had he received all the information. In such a case, the researcher needs to balance the potential benefits of the study with the likely harm to the subject and may very well come to the conclusion that this is an ethical practice. Others might disagree, of course.

There are a host of other questions to consider. How long will you stay in the field? What kinds of relationships will you form with the people you are observing, and how will you gracefully “exit” the field with the least amount of pain to those who have come to rely on your presence? What level of collaboration do you have with your participants? How deep are your interview questions? Are your probes too invasive? All of these are ethical questions that arise during the data collection phase.

More questions arise during data analysis and the presentation of your findings. Because we have not yet gotten to those subjects in this book, I am going to reserve much of the discussion on these and point them out in relevant chapters. There are two later-stage ethical challenges, however, that you need to plan for in advance: Who will own the data you collect? What kind of impact might the presentation or reporting of your findings have?

You will often need to think about who owns the data that has been collected and analyzed and who has rights of control over it. For example, some researchers negotiate access with employers or supervisors at particular worksites. Those employers or supervisors may then expect some control over the data collected. Maybe they want to see the results first, before anyone else, or perhaps they even want a say in which results are made public. It is important to work out any agreements on the use of the data in advance so you are not put in a position of having someone else dictate what you can do with your data.

You should also consider the impact your study may have on those who granted you access to the site and to all of those who were willing to be interviewed or observed. If your findings could result in a negative outcome (anything from bad press to loss of business or community support to public shaming of an individual or group), you should anticipate this and consider your ethical obligations, obligations that may exist to multiple persons and groups and may be in conflict with one another. How will you handle this?

Many of these questions (and more) will arise during the course of your research. Keeping a journal will help you reflect on the challenges. Every decision you make will probably carry an ethical consideration. To give you a sense of how ambiguous these ethical decision points can be, let’s walk through a few ethical scenarios.

Part 2: Ethical Scenarios

Below are several short scenarios that will help you think through how to spot ethical issues and how you might resolve them. Pay attention to all stages of the research process, from design to publication. It’s possible that one or more of the scenarios are fatally flawed from the very start. Think about what each researcher owes to (1) the scientific community of which they are a part and (2) the human beings with whom they are building relationships. How to properly balance the two? A few questions follow each scenario, but you need not confine your consideration to these questions. Note that each scenario might bring up more than one ethical issue!

Scenario 1: The Glass Ceiling

Jacinda would like to understand how women deal with sexual discrimination and harassment in engineering firms. She is able to secure a temporary job as a receptionist at Engineer-O, a Fortune 500 firm. To everyone in the company, she is simply a “temp.” While working there, she approaches several women about their experiences. A few are willing to sit down and be recorded by her as she asks them questions about working at the company. In addition to the interviews, she keeps notes of her own daily experiences at the company (during her breaks and at night). She witnesses many examples of sexual harassment—managers who make sexual comments to their employees. She also takes pictures of the office and cubicle walls of some of the male employees, where sexually explicit images of women and/or misogynistic sayings are posted.

Questions to consider: From whom must Jacinda get consent for her study? The women she interviews, the men whose walls she takes pictures of, those whose activities she observes? Does she need to tell her boss that she is an undercover researcher? Should she?

Scenario 2: #BlackLivesMatter

Anne is a White twenty-five-year-old graduate student who is interested in police-community relations, especially in urban neighborhoods that have experienced conflicts (e.g., police shootings of unarmed Black men and children). She has a very close friend, Jamal, who lives in one such neighborhood. He allows her to hang out with him for a summer. She carries around a notebook and writes down observations frequently. She also records a few interviews with Jamal, his best friends, his parents, and his beloved grandmother, whose house he lives in. One Sunday, while she is at his grandmother’s house, the police knock down the front door and force everyone to lie down on the ground as they search the premises. She begins to cry and writes movingly afterward of the pain and terror written on Joyce’s (Jamal’s grandmother) face as they lie next to each other with a gun at their necks. On another occasion, she is present when Jamal finds out his best friend has been fatally shot by a local gang. She gets in the car with Jamal as he looks for the killer. He asks her to hold his gun. She writes all of this down and plans on publishing everything.

Questions to consider: What are Anne’s duties and responsibilities in terms of publishing these events? From whom must she get consent? What if Joyce and Jamal’s friends did not know she was a graduate student conducting a study? Did she commit a crime when she carried Jamal’s gun for him? Should she have received permission from the police department before conducting this study?

Scenario 3: The Unhoused

Julie is doing a study of the unhoused in San Francisco. She approaches several men on the street and explains her study and asks if she can follow them around. Twelve agree. She spends several weeks in their company—getting to know them, following them as they panhandle and recycle old bottles and cans, and asking them questions about their lives. She records many of their conversations on her phone. When it is too cold outdoors, she sometimes allows one or two men to crash at her apartment. She knows they really dislike the shelters and how they are run. She also encourages them all to use her shower during the course of the study. Other times, she buys them food. Once or twice, she has paid for beers and has sat with them as they drink and reminisce about their childhoods. And still other times she has given “Julius” cash, even though there is a chance he will use it to buy heroin. After six months, she realizes she has enough material to write a book about the men. She leaves San Francisco and moves back to her home in Berkeley. Although she tells the men the study is over, she does not follow up with them or provide any of them with contact information for her.

Questions to consider: What does Julie owe the unhoused participants of her study after six months? Should she have provided them with a way to contact her in the future? Should she have made an attempt to reconnect with them? Was it appropriate to allow the men to use her apartment? Would it have been wrong not to do so? Should Julie have helped the men more? Did she help them too much? Was it wrong to drink beer with them? To give Julius cash he might have used to buy heroin? If her book is published to great success, does she owe any of the proceeds to the men?

Scenario 4: Studying Upside Down

Franco is a graduate student interested in understanding the practice of racial discrimination and how this might be related to individual beliefs about insider/outsider status within a community. During the Trump administration, he heard a lot about “White working-class racists,” but he suspects that wealthy White persons are just as discriminatory as poor White persons. He designs a research plan that allows him to hear what people have to say about “who belongs” in the US and a part that allows him to actually observe interactions they have with others. As his father belongs to a very fancy golf club, he plans to (1) interview the members of the club and (2) golf at the club and otherwise hang out and watch interactions between (primarily White) members and (primarily Latinx) staff. He did not ask the club’s permission. The club leadership heard about the study, however, when one of its members mentioned they saw a young man writing things down in a notebook when they were in an argument with a caddy. The club pressured the IRB of Franco’s university to revoke his application. Franco doesn’t fight the decision (how can he?). Still interested in understanding racial discrimination, he uses the same research design, but now at a poor neighborhood’s community pool. He finds some examples of racism in his interviews with the White working-class pool-goers and observes one example of what could be racial discrimination.

Questions to consider: Should Franco have approached the golf club directly to secure permission for this study? Why do you think he did not? Does it matter that his father was a member? Was his original design a good one? Why or why not? How would you have handled the IRB revocation? Is Franco’s new site a good one? Why or why not? Is his decision to observe at a community pool ethical?

Scenario 5: Political Deception

Mumbi, a graduate student from Kenya, is fascinated by American politics. In particular, she wants to understand the increasingly visible role of race among politically active conservatives in the US. She plans to do research at a local Republican Party headquarters during campaign season. She will work there herself and interview other volunteers. Mumbi’s informed consent form explains that she is doing research on “how people engage politically.” Informally, she tells her covolunteers that she is a Republican and that she voted for Trump. However, as a Kenyan citizen, she is not able to vote in the elections, and had she done so, she would never have voted for Trump. She thinks Trump is truly the devil.

Questions to consider: Is Mumbi’s failure to identify herself unethical? What does she owe the people she is interviewing? Is it ethical to omit the motivations for the study? Had she included all the facts about herself and her motivation for the study, would she have received different information from the people she interviewed? Is deception justified in this case or not? Should Mumbi worry about her personal safety?

Scenario 6: What Do Your Friends Say About You?

Serena is a psychology graduate student trying to understand how people make friends. She runs an experiment using primarily college students at a large research university in the Pacific Northwest. In the experiment, she provides students notecards with interesting facts about some strangers and records which strangers get selected as potential new friends. Some of the facts include (1) shops at Walmart, (2) has traveled outside the US, and (3) owns a MAGA hat or T-shirt. She finds that those who espoused fact (2) were overwhelmingly chosen as friends and that only one in five chose a friend that selected (3) and zero chose friends who chose (1). Based on these findings, she develops a theory that people value cross-cultural experiences. She debriefs the students in the experiment and tells them that (1) was the big loser!

Questions to consider: Are there any problems with this study design? Who is likely to be included and who is not likely to be included in the sample? What might be wrong with the theory Serena developed? Were any college students harmed by the questions asked? What would you have advised Serena before she began running the experiment?

Quick Recap of Common Ethical Challenges to Consider

Who was included in the sample design? Who was not included?
How did the researcher get entry into the field?
What did the researcher tell people about their research?
Was there “informed consent”?
When reporting findings, was care taken to protect the anonymity , confidentiality , and dignity of the research subjects?
Does this study contribute to our knowledge about a subject in a way that does not foster harm ?

Research Design Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches

John W. Creswell - Department of Family Medicine, University of Michigan
J. David Creswell - Carnegie Mellon University, USA
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“A long time ago, I participated in one of Dr. Creswell’s workshops on mixed methods research.... I am still learning from Dr. Creswell. I appreciate how he takes complex topics and makes them accessible to everyone. But I must caution my students that Dr. Creswell’s easygoing cadence and elegant descriptions sometimes mask the depth of the material. This reminds me of why he is such a highly respected researcher and teacher.”

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“This book is based around dissertation chapters, and that's why I love it using in my class. Practical, concise, and to the point!”

“This book is easy to use. The information and additional charts are also helpful.”

Clear material, student support website, and faculty resources.

The book provides a comprehensive overview and does well at demystifying the research philosophy. I have recommended it to my level 7 students for their dissertation project.

This book will be added to next academic year's reading list.

I am fed up with trying to get access to this "inspection copy". You don't respond to emails (and the email addresses you provide do not work). I get regular emails from you saying my ebook order is ready, but it does not appear in VitalSource and I cannot access it through any link on this web page. I am not willing to waste any more time on this. There are good alternatives.

Excellent introduction for research methods.

Creswell has always had excellent textbooks. Sixth Edition is no exception!

Fully updated for the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.
More inclusive and supportive language throughout helps readers better see themselves in the research process.
Learning Objectives provide additional structure and clarity to the reading process.
The latest information on participatory research, evaluating literature for quality, using software to design literature maps, and additional statistical software types is newly included in this edition.
Chapter 4: Writing Strategies and Ethical Considerations now includes information on indigenous populations and data collection after IRB review.
An updated Chapter 8: Quantitative Methods now includes more foundational details, such as Type 1 and Type 2 errors and discussions of advantages and disadvantages of quantitative designs.
A restructured and revised Chapter 10: Mixed Methods Procedures brings state-of-the-art thinking to this increasingly popular approach.
Chapters 8, 9, and 10 now have parallel structures so readers can better compare and contrast each approach.
Reworked end-of-chapter exercises offer a more straightforward path to application for students.
New research examples throughout the text offer students contemporary studies for evaluation.
Current references and additional readings are included in this new edition.
Compares qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research in one book for unparalleled coverage.
Highly interdisciplinary examples make this book widely appealing to a broad range of courses and disciplines.
Ethical coverage throughout consistently reminds students to use good judgment and to be fair and unbiased in their research.
Writing exercises conclude each chapter so that readers can practice the principles learned in the chapter; if the reader completes all of the exercises, they will have a written plan for their scholarly study.
Numbered points provide checklists of each step in a process.
Annotated passages help reinforce the reader's comprehension of key research ideas.

Sample Materials & Chapters

Chapter 1: The Selection of a Research Approach

Chapter 2: Review of the Literature

For instructors

Select a purchasing option, related products.

Craft of Research (CoR) Study/Discussion Guide

Chapter 7: making good arguments: an overview, top ten salient sentence strings.

In a research report, you make a claim , back it with reasons , support them with evidence , acknowledge and respond to the other views, and sometimes explain your principles of reasoning.
Reasons support main claims, but "lower" reasons can support "higher" reasons.
At the core of every research report is the answer to the research question, the solution to your problem - your main claim. You have to back up that claim with two kinds of support: reasons and evidence.
No thoughtful reader will accept your claim based solely on your views: you must also address theirs.
Careful readers will question every part of your argument, so you must anticipate as many of their questions as you can, and then acknowledge and respond to the most important ones.
The challenge all researchers face, however, is not just responding to readers' questions, alternatives, and objections, but imagining them in the first place.
Only evidence "stands alone", but even then you must explain where you got it and maybe why you think it's reliable, and that may require yet another argument.
Readers judge your arguments not just by the facts you offer, but by how well you anticipate their questions and concerns. In doing so, they also judge the quality of your mind, even your implied character, traditionally called your ethos .
When you acknowledge other views and explain your principles of reasoning in warrants, you give readers good reason to work with you in developing and testing new ideas.
In the long run, the ethos you project in individual arguments hardens into your reputation, something every researcher must care about, because your reputation is the tactit sixth element in every argument you write. It answers the unspoken question, Can I trust you? That answer must be Yes .

Academic research and writing

A concise introduction

Chapter 7 – Primer

The structural elements to be applied in academic writing depend on the nature of the research project. Manifestations of academic writing range from student assignments and term papers to doctoral theses and other forms of complex research documentations. Some structural elements are always used in research papers. Other structural elements are optionally or selectively used. Technically, research papers can be divided into four sections: addments, directories, main body and annex. Each of these sections contains different structural elements that have to be applied in accordance with the formal instructions laid out in academic style guides. Although the applicable rules may vary according to the field of research, some commonalities for structural elements exist. These commonalities may be based on logical considerations or result from traditional academic conventions. Important elements to be discussed in this chapter are cover page, abstract, outline, directories, main body, bibliography and list of references, glossary and appendix, declaration of originality as well as data carrier and electronic storage media.

7. Theory and paradigm

Chapter outline.

What are your assumptions? (16 minute read)
Ethical and critical considerations (15 minute read)
Social work research paradigms (25 minute read, plus 10 minute video)
Developing your theoretical framework (15 minute read)
Designing your project using theory and paradigm (13 minute read)

Content warning: examples in this chapter contain references to post-traumatic stress disorder and similar culture-bound syndromes related to trauma, colonization and Global North/West hegemony, racist beliefs about intelligence and racist science, sexism in medical science and STEM fields, dropping out of high school, poverty, addiction and the disease model, police violence and systemic racism, rape culture, depression, homelessness, “coming out” as a lesbian, ethnocentrism, sexual harassment, domestic violence, and oppression of TANF recipients.

7.1. What are your assumptions?

Learning objectives.

Learners will be able to…

Ground your research project and working question in the philosophical assumptions of social science
Define the terms ‘ ontology ‘ and ‘ epistemology ‘ and explain how they relate to quantitative and qualitative research methods

Last chapter, we reviewed the ethical commitment that social work researchers have to protect the people and communities impacted by their research. Answering the practical questions of harm, conflicts of interest, and other ethical issues will provide clear foundation of what you can and cannot do as part of your research project. In this chapter, we will transition from the real world to the conceptual world. Together, we will discover and explore the theoretical and philosophical foundations of your project. You should complete this chapter with a better sense of how theoretical and philosophical concepts help you answer your working question, and in turn, how theory and philosophy will affect the research project you design.

Embrace philosophy

The single biggest barrier to engaging with philosophy of science, at least according to some of my students, is the word philosophy. I had one student who told me that as soon as that word came up, she tuned out because she thought it was above her head. As we discussed in Chapter 1 , some students already feel like research methods is too complex of a topic, and asking them to engage with philosophical concepts within research is like asking asking them to tap dance while wearing ice skates.

For those students, I would first answer that this chapter is my favorite one to write because it was the most personally impactful for me to learn during my MSW program. Finding my theoretical and philosophical home was important for me to develop as a clinician and a researcher. Following our advice in Chapter 2 , you’ve hopefully chosen a topic that is important to your interests as a social work practitioner, and consider this chapter an opportunity to find your personal roots in addition to revising your working question and designing your research study.

Exploring theoretical and philosophical questions will cause your working question and research project to become clearer…eventually. Consider this chapter as something similar to getting a nice outfit for a fancy occasion. You have to try on a lot of different theories and philosophies before you find the one that fits with what you’re going for. There’s no right way to try on clothes, and there’s no one right theory or philosophy for your project. You might find a good fit with the first one you’ve tried on, or it might take a few different outfits. You have to find ideas that make sense together because they fit with how you think about your topic and how you should study it.

As you read this section, try to think about which assumptions feel right for your working question and research project. Which assumptions match what you think and believe about your topic? The goal is not to find the “right” answer, but to develop your conceptual understanding of your research topic by finding the right theoretical and philosophical fit.

Theoretical & philosophical fluency

In addition to self-discovery, theoretical and philosophical fluency is a skill that social workers must possess in order to engage in social justice work. That’s because theory and philosophy help sharpen your perceptions of the social world. Just as social workers use empirical data to support their work, they also use theoretical and philosophical foundations. More importantly, theory and philosophy help social workers build heuristics that can help identify the fundamental assumptions at the heart of social conflict and social problems. They alert you to the patterns in the underlying assumptions that different people make and how those assumptions shape their worldview, what they view as true, and what they hope to accomplish. In the next section, we will review feminist and other critical perspectives on research, and they should help inform you of how assumptions about research can reinforce existing oppression.

Understanding these deeper structures is a true gift of social work research. Because we acknowledge the usefulness and truth value of multiple philosophies and worldviews contained in this chapter, we can arrive at a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the social world. Methods can be closely associated with particular worldviews or ideologies. There are necessarily philosophical and theoretical aspects to this, and this can be intimidating at times, but it’s important to critically engage with these questions to improve the quality of research.

A penguin on an ice float. The top of the float is labeled method, next down is methodology, theory, and philosophical foundations.

Building your ice float

Although it may not seem like it right now, your project will develop a from a strong connection to previous theoretical and philosophical ideas about your topic. It’s likely you already have some (perhaps unstated) philosophical or theoretical ideas that undergird your thinking on the topic. Moreover, the philosophical questions we review here should inform how you understand different theories and practice modalities in social work, as they deal with the bedrock questions about science and human knowledge.

Before we can dive into philosophy, we need to recall out conversation from Chapter 1 about objective truth and subjective truths. Let’s test your knowledge with a quick example. Is crime on the rise in the United States? A recent Five Thirty Eight article highlights the disparity between historical trends on crime that are at or near their lowest in the thirty years with broad perceptions by the public that crime is on the rise (Koerth & Thomson-DeVeaux, 2020). [1] Social workers skilled at research can marshal objective facts, much like the authors do, to demonstrate that people’s perceptions are not based on a rational interpretation of the world. Of course, that is not where our work ends. Subjective facts might seek to decenter this narrative of ever-increasing crime, deconstruct is racist and oppressive origins, or simply document how that narrative shapes how individuals and communities conceptualize their world.

Objective does not mean right, and subjective does not mean wrong. Researchers must understand what kind of truth they are searching for so they can choose a theoretical framework, methodology, and research question that matches. As we discussed in Chapter 1 , researchers seeking objective truth (one of the philosophical foundations at the bottom of Figure 7.1) often employ quantitative methods (one of the methods at the top of Figure 7.1). Similarly, researchers seeking subjective truths (again, at the bottom of Figure 7.1) often employ qualitative methods (at the top of Figure 7.1). This chapter is about the connective tissue, and by the time you are done reading, you should have a first draft of a theoretical and philosophical (a.k.a. paradigmatic) framework for your study.

Ontology: Assumptions about what is real & true

In section 1.2, we reviewed the two types of truth that social work researchers seek— objective truth and subjective truths —and linked these with the methods—quantitative and qualitative—that researchers use to study the world. If those ideas aren’t fresh in your mind, you may want to navigate back to that section for an introduction.

These two types of truth rely on different assumptions about what is real in the social world—i.e., they have a different ontology . Ontology refers to the study of being (literally, it means “rational discourse about being”). In philosophy, basic questions about existence are typically posed as ontological, e.g.:

What is there?
What types of things are there?
How can we describe existence?
What kind of categories can things go into?
Are the categories of existence hierarchical?

Objective vs. subjective ontologies

At first, it may seem silly to question whether the phenomena we encounter in the social world are real. Of course you exist, your thoughts exist, your computer exists, and your friends exist. You can see them with your eyes. This is the ontological framework of realism , which simply means that the concepts we talk about in science exist independent of observation (Burrell & Morgan, 1979). [2] Obviously, when we close our eyes, the universe does not disappear. You may be familiar with the philosophical conundrum: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

The natural sciences, like physics and biology, also generally rely on the assumption of realism. Lone trees falling make a sound. We assume that gravity and the rest of physics are there, even when no one is there to observe them. Mitochondria are easy to spot with a powerful microscope, and we can observe and theorize about their function in a cell. The gravitational force is invisible, but clearly apparent from observable facts, such as watching an apple fall from a tree. Of course, out theories about gravity have changed over the years. Improvements were made when observations could not be correctly explained using existing theories and new theories emerged that provided a better explanation of the data.

As we discussed in section 1.2, culture-bound syndromes are an excellent example of where you might come to question realism. Of course, from a Western perspective as researchers in the United States, we think that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) classification of mental health disorders is real and that these culture-bound syndromes are aberrations from the norm. But what about if you were a person from Korea experiencing Hwabyeong? Wouldn’t you consider the Western diagnosis of somatization disorder to be incorrect or incomplete? This conflict raises the question–do either Hwabyeong or DSM diagnoses like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) really exist at all…or are they just social constructs that only exist in our minds?

If your answer is “no, they do not exist,” you are adopting the ontology of anti-realism ( or relativism ), or the idea that social concepts do not exist outside of human thought. Unlike the realists who seek a single, universal truth, the anti-realists perceive a sea of truths, created and shared within a social and cultural context. Unlike objective truth, which is true for all, subjective truths will vary based on who you are observing and the context in which you are observing them. The beliefs, opinions, and preferences of people are actually truths that social scientists measure and describe. Additionally, subjective truths do not exist independent of human observation because they are the product of the human mind. We negotiate what is true in the social world through language, arriving at a consensus and engaging in debate within our socio-cultural context.

These theoretical assumptions should sound familiar if you’ve studied social constructivism or symbolic interactionism in your other MSW courses, most likely in human behavior in the social environment (HBSE). [3] From an anti-realist perspective, what distinguishes the social sciences from natural sciences is human thought. When we try to conceptualize trauma from an anti-realist perspective, we must pay attention to the feelings, opinions, and stories in people’s minds. In their most radical formulations, anti-realists propose that these feelings and stories are all that truly exist.

What happens when a situation is incorrectly interpreted? Certainly, who is correct about what is a bit subjective. It depends on who you ask. Even if you can determine whether a person is actually incorrect, they think they are right. Thus, what may not be objectively true for everyone is nevertheless true to the individual interpreting the situation. Furthermore, they act on the assumption that they are right. We all do. Much of our behaviors and interactions are a manifestation of our personal subjective truth. In this sense, even incorrect interpretations are truths, even though they are true only to one person or a group of misinformed people. This leads us to question whether the social concepts we think about really exist. For researchers using subjective ontologies, they might only exist in our minds; whereas, researchers who use objective ontologies which assume these concepts exist independent of thought.

How do we resolve this dichotomy? As social workers, we know that often times what appears to be an either/or situation is actually a both/and situation. Let’s take the example of trauma. There is clearly an objective thing called trauma. We can draw out objective facts about trauma and how it interacts with other concepts in the social world such as family relationships and mental health. However, that understanding is always bound within a specific cultural and historical context. Moreover, each person’s individual experience and conceptualization of trauma is also true. Much like a client who tells you their truth through their stories and reflections, when a participant in a research study tells you what their trauma means to them, it is real even though only they experience and know it that way. By using both objective and subjective analytic lenses, we can explore different aspects of trauma—what it means to everyone, always, everywhere, and what is means to one person or group of people, in a specific place and time.

Epistemology: Assumptions about how we know things

Having discussed what is true, we can proceed to the next natural question—how can we come to know what is real and true? This is epistemology . Epistemology is derived from the Ancient Greek epistēmē which refers to systematic or reliable knowledge (as opposed to doxa, or “belief”). Basically, it means “rational discourse about knowledge,” and the focus is the study of knowledge and methods used to generate knowledge. Epistemology has a history as long as philosophy, and lies at the foundation of both scientific and philosophical knowledge.

Epistemological questions include:

What is knowledge?
How can we claim to know anything at all?
What does it mean to know something?
What makes a belief justified?
What is the relationship between the knower and what can be known?

While these philosophical questions can seem far removed from real-world interaction, thinking about these kinds of questions in the context of research helps you target your inquiry by informing your methods and helping you revise your working question. Epistemology is closely connected to method as they are both concerned with how to create and validate knowledge. Research methods are essentially epistemologies – by following a certain process we support our claim to know about the things we have been researching. Inappropriate or poorly followed methods can undermine claims to have produced new knowledge or discovered a new truth. This can have implications for future studies that build on the data and/or conceptual framework used.

Research methods can be thought of as essentially stripped down, purpose-specific epistemologies. The knowledge claims that underlie the results of surveys, focus groups, and other common research designs ultimately rest on epistemological assumptions of their methods. Focus groups and other qualitative methods usually rely on subjective epistemological (and ontological) assumptions. Surveys and and other quantitative methods usually rely on objective epistemological assumptions. These epistemological assumptions often entail congruent subjective or objective ontological assumptions about the ultimate questions about reality.

Objective vs. subjective epistemologies

One key consideration here is the status of ‘truth’ within a particular epistemology or research method. If, for instance, some approaches emphasize subjective knowledge and deny the possibility of an objective truth, what does this mean for choosing a research method?

We began to answer this question in Chapter 1 when we described the scientific method and objective and subjective truths. Epistemological subjectivism focuses on what people think and feel about a situation, while epistemological objectivism focuses on objective facts irrelevant to our interpretation of a situation (Lin, 2015). [4]

While there are many important questions about epistemology to ask (e.g., “How can I be sure of what I know?” or “What can I not know?” see Willis, 2007 [5] for more), from a pragmatic perspective most relevant epistemological question in the social sciences is whether truth is better accessed using numerical data or words and performances. Generally, scientists approaching research with an objective epistemology (and realist ontology) will use quantitative methods to arrive at scientific truth. Quantitative methods examine numerical data to precisely describe and predict elements of the social world. For example, while people can have different definitions for poverty, an objective measurement such as an annual income of “less than $25,100 for a family of four” provides a precise measurement that can be compared to incomes from all other people in any society from any time period, and refers to real quantities of money that exist in the world. Mathematical relationships are uniquely useful in that they allow comparisons across individuals as well as time and space. In this book, we will review the most common designs used in quantitative research: surveys and experiments. These types of studies usually rely on the epistemological assumption that mathematics can represent the phenomena and relationships we observe in the social world.

Although mathematical relationships are useful, they are limited in what they can tell you. While you can learn use quantitative methods to measure individuals’ experiences and thought processes, you will miss the story behind the numbers. To analyze stories scientifically, we need to examine their expression in interviews, journal entries, performances, and other cultural artifacts using qualitative methods . Because social science studies human interaction and the reality we all create and share in our heads, subjectivists focus on language and other ways we communicate our inner experience. Qualitative methods allow us to scientifically investigate language and other forms of expression—to pursue research questions that explore the words people write and speak. This is consistent with epistemological subjectivism’s focus on individual and shared experiences, interpretations, and stories.

It is important to note that qualitative methods are entirely compatible with seeking objective truth. Approaching qualitative analysis with a more objective perspective, we look simply at what was said and examine its surface-level meaning. If a person says they brought their kids to school that day, then that is what is true. A researcher seeking subjective truth may focus on how the person says the words—their tone of voice, facial expressions, metaphors, and so forth. By focusing on these things, the researcher can understand what it meant to the person to say they dropped their kids off at school. Perhaps in describing dropping their children off at school, the person thought of their parents doing the same thing. In this way, subjective truths are deeper, more personalized, and difficult to generalize.

Putting it all together

As you might guess by the structure of the next two parts of this textbook, the distinction between quantitative and qualitative is important. Because of the distinct philosophical assumptions of objectivity and subjectivity, it will inform how you define the concepts in your research question, how you measure them, and how you gather and interpret your raw data. You certainly do not need to have a final answer right now! But stop for a minute and think about which approach feels right so far. In the next section, we will consider another set of philosophical assumptions that relate to ethics and the role of research in achieving social justice.

Key Takeaways

Philosophers of science disagree on the basic tenets of what is true and how we come to know what is true.
Researchers searching for objective truth will likely have a different theoretical framework, research design, and methods than researchers searching for subjective truths.
These differences are due to different assumptions about what is real and true (ontology) and how we can come to understand what is real and true (epistemology).

Does an objective or subjective epistemological/ontological framework make the most sense for your research project?

Are you more concerned with how people think and feel about your topic, their subjective truths—more specific to the time and place of your project?
Or are you more concerned with objective truth, so that your results might generalize to populations beyond the ones in your study?

Using your answer to the above question, describe how either quantitative or qualitative methods make the most sense for your project.

7.2 Ethical and critical considerations

Apply feminist, anti-racist, and decolonization critiques of social science to your project
Define axiology and describe the axiological assumptions of your project

So far, we have talked about knowledge as it exists in the world, but what about the process of research itself? Doesn’t the researcher bring their own biases, perspectives, and experiences to the process? The critique of science as an enterprise dominated by the perspectives of white men from North America and Europe is one that has had a profound impact on how we view knowledge. Because scientists design research studies, create measures, and interpret results, there is always the risk that a scientist’s objectivity slips and as a result, biases are expressed.

Consider this example from professional sports. The National Football League (NFL) has long downplayed the lifelong impact of concussions and traumatic brain injury. However, due to the racist science that existed when the issue was first addressed through a settlement in the 1990s, Black players were assumed to have lower cognitive function and were thus any losses in cognitive function were less significant, resulting in a lower payout or additional barriers to an eventual payout (Dale, 2021). [6] It is hard to view this “race-norming” without taking into account the impact of the Bell Curve, a racist and methodologically flawed book that purported to support white intellectual superiority (Bell, 1995). [7] According to an Associated Press report :

The NFL noted that the norms were developed in medicine “to stop bias in testing, not perpetrate it”…The binary race norms, when they are used in the testing, assumes that Black patients start with worse cognitive function than whites and other non-Blacks. That makes it harder for them to show a deficit and qualify for an award. [Two players], for instance, were denied awards but would have qualified had they been white, according to their lawsuit (Dale, 2021, para 10-13).

Part of the value in making the philosophical assumptions of your project explicit is that you can scan for sources of explicit or implicit bias you bring to the research process.

Whose truth does science establish?

Social work is concerned with the “isms” of oppression (ableism, ageism, cissexism, classism, heterosexism, racism, sexism, etc.), and so our approach to science must reconcile its history as both a tool of oppression and its exclusion of oppressed groups. Science grew out of the Enlightenment, a philosophical movement which applied reason and empirical analysis to understanding the world. While the Enlightenment brought forth tremendous achievements, the critiques of Marxian, feminist, and other critical theorists complicated the Enlightenment understanding of science. For this section, I will focus on feminist critiques of science, building upon an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Crasnow, 2020). [8]

In its original formulation, science was an individualistic endeavor. As we learned in Chapter 1 , a basic statement of the scientific method is that a researcher studies existing theories on a topic, formulates a hypothesis about what might be true, and either confirms or disconfirms their hypothesis through experiment and rigorous observation. Over time, our theories become more accurate in their predictions and more comprehensive in their conclusions. Scientists put aside their preconceptions, look at the data, and build their theories based on objective rationality.

Yet, this cannot be perfectly true. Scientists are human, after all. As a profession historically dominated by white men, scientists have dismissed women and other minorities as being psychologically unfit for the scientific profession. While attitudes have improved, science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) and related fields remain dominated by white men (Grogan, 2019). [9] Biases can persist in social work theory and research when social scientists do not have similar experiences to the populations they study.

Gender bias can influence the research questions scientists choose to answer. Feminist critiques of medical science drew attention to women’s health issues, spurring research and changing standards of care. The focus on domestic violence in the empirical literature can also be seen as a result of feminist critique. Thus, critical theory helps us critique what is on the agenda for science. If science is to answer important questions, it must speak to the concerns of all people. Through the democratization in access to scientific knowledge and the means to produce it, science becomes a sister process of social development and social justice.

The goal of a diverse and participatory scientific community lies in contrast to much of what we understand to be “proper” scientific knowledge. Many of the older, classic social science theories were developed based on research which observed males or from university students in the United States or other Western nations. How these observations were made, what questions were asked, and how the data were interpreted were shaped by the same oppressive forces that existed in broader society, a process that continues into the present. In psychology, the concept of hysteria or hysterical women was believed to be caused by a wandering womb (Tasca et al., 2012). [10] Even today, there are gender biases in diagnoses of histrionic personality disorder and racial biases in psychotic disorders (Klonsky et al., 2002) [11] because the theories underlying them were created in a sexist and racist culture. In these ways, science can reinforce the truth of the white Western male perspective.

Finally, it is important to note that social science research is often conducted on populations rather than with populations. Historically, this has often meant Western men traveling to other countries and seeking to understand other cultures through a Western lens. Lacking cultural humility and failing to engage stakeholders, ethnocentric research of this sort has led to the view of non-Western cultures as inferior. Moreover, the use of these populations as research subjects rather than co-equal participants in the research process privileges the researcher’s knowledge over that from other groups or cultures. Researchers working with indigenous cultures, in particular, had a destructive habit of conducting research for a short time and then leaving, without regard for the impact their study had on the population. These critiques of Western science aim to decolonize social science and dismantle the racist ideas the oppress indigenous and non-Western peoples through research (Smith, 2013). [12]

The central concept in feminist, anti-racist, and decolonization critiques (among other critical frames) is epistemic injustice. Epistemic injustice happens when someone is treated unfairly in their capacity to know something or describe their experience of the world. As described by Fricker (2011), [13] the injustice emerges from the dismissal of knowledge from oppressed groups, discrimination against oppressed groups in scientific communities, and the resulting gap between what scientists can make sense of from their experience and the experiences of people with less power who have lived experience of the topic. We recommend this video from Edinburgh Law School which applies epistemic injustice to studying public health emergencies, disabilities, and refugee services .

Take a moment and reflect on how your life experiences may inform how you understand your topic. What do you already know? How might you be biased?
Describe how previous or current studies and theories about your topic have been influenced by oppressive forces such as racism and sexism.

Self-determination and free will

When scientists observe social phenomena, they often take the perspective of determinism , meaning that what is seen is the result of processes that occurred earlier in time (i.e., cause and effect). As you will see in Chapter 9 , this process is represented in the classical formulation of a research question which asks “what is the relationship between X (cause) and Y (effect)?” By framing a research question in such a way, the scientist is disregarding any reciprocal influence that Y has on X. Moreover, the scientist also excludes human agency from the equation. It is simply that a cause will necessitate an effect. For example, a researcher might find that few people living in neighborhoods with higher rates of poverty graduate from high school, and thus conclude that poverty causes adolescents to drop out of school. This conclusion, however, does not address the story behind the numbers. Each person who is counted as graduating or dropping out has a unique story of why they made the choices they did. Perhaps they had a mentor or parent that helped them succeed. Perhaps they faced the choice between employment to support family members or continuing in school.

For this reason, determinism is critiqued as reductionistic in the social sciences because people have agency over their actions. This is unlike the natural sciences like physics. While a table isn’t aware of the friction it has with the floor, parents and children are likely aware of the friction in their relationships and act based on how they interpret that conflict. The opposite of determinism is free will , that humans can choose how they act and their behavior and thoughts are not solely determined by what happened prior in a neat, cause-and-effect relationship. Researchers adopting a perspective of free will view the process of, continuing with our education example, seeking higher education as the result of a number of mutually influencing forces and the spontaneous and implicit processes of human thought. For these researchers, the picture painted by determinism is too simplistic.

A similar dichotomy can be found in the debate between individualism and holism . When you hear something like “the disease model of addiction leads to policies that pathologize and oppress people who use drugs,” the speaker is making a methodologically holistic argument. They are making a claim that abstract social forces (the disease model, policies) can cause things to change. A methodological individualist would critique this argument by saying that the disease model of addiction doesn’t actually cause anything by itself. From this perspective, it is the individuals, rather than any abstract social force, who oppress people who use drugs. The disease model itself doesn’t cause anything to change; the individuals who follow the precepts of the disease model are the agents who actually oppress people in reality. To an individualist, all social phenomena are the result of individual human action and agency. To a holist, social forces can determine outcomes for individuals without individuals playing a causal role, undercutting free will and research projects that seek to maximize human agency.

Is human action, or free will, central to how you understand your topic?
Or are humans more passive and what happens to them more determined by the social forces that influence their life?
Reflect on how your project’s assumptions may differ from your own assumptions about free will and determinism. For example, my beliefs about self-determination and free will always inform my social work practice. However, my working question and research project may rely on social theories that are deterministic and do not address human agency.

Radical change

Another assumption scientists make is around the nature of the social world. Is it an orderly place that remains relatively stable over time? Or is it a place of constant change and conflict? The view of the social world as an orderly place can help a researcher describe how things fit together to create a cohesive whole. For example, systems theory can help you understand how different systems interact with and influence one another, drawing energy from one place to another through an interconnected network with a tendency towards homeostasis. This is a more consensus -focused and status-quo-oriented perspective. Yet, this view of the social world cannot adequately explain the radical shifts and revolutions that occur. It also leaves little room for human action and free will. In this more radical space, change consists of the fundamental assumptions about how the social world works.

For example, at the time of this writing, protests are taking place across the world to remember the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and other victims of police violence and systematic racism. Public support of Black Lives Matter , an anti-racist activist group that focuses on police violence and criminal justice reform, has experienced a radical shift in public support in just two weeks since the killing, equivalent to the previous 21 months of advocacy and social movement organizing (Cohn & Quealy, 2020). [14] Abolition of police and prisons , once a fringe idea, has moved into the conversation about remaking the criminal justice system from the ground-up, centering its historic and current role as an oppressive system for Black Americans. Seemingly overnight, reducing the money spent on police and giving that money to social services became a moderate political position.

A researcher centering change may choose to understand this transformation or even incorporate radical anti-racist ideas into the design and methods of their study. For an example of how to do so, see this participatory action research study working with Black and Latino youth (Bautista et al., 2013). [15] Contrastingly, a researcher centering consensus and the status quo might focus on incremental changes what people currently think about the topic. For example, see this survey of social work student attitudes on poverty and race that seeks to understand the status quo of student attitudes and suggest small changes that might change things for the better (Constance-Huggins et al., 2020). [16] To be clear, both studies contribute to racial justice. However, you can see by examining the methods section of each article how the participatory action research article addresses power and values as a core part of their research design, qualitative ethnography and deep observation over many years, in ways that privilege the voice of people with the least power. In this way, it seeks to rectify the epistemic injustice of excluding and oversimplifying Black and Latino youth. Contrast this more radical approach with the more traditional approach taken in the second article, in which they measured student attitudes using a survey developed by researchers.

Traditional studies will be less participatory. You as the researcher will determine the research question, how to measure it, data collection, etc.
Radical studies will be more participatory. You as the researcher seek to undermine power imbalances at each stage of the research process.
Pragmatically, more participatory studies take longer to complete and may be less suited to student projects that need to be completed in a short time frame.

Axiology: Assumptions about values

Axiology is the study of values and value judgements (literally “rational discourse about values [a xía]”). In philosophy this field is subdivided into ethics (the study of morality) and aesthetics (the study of beauty, taste and judgement). For the hard-nosed scientist, the relevance of axiology might not be obvious. After all, what difference do one’s feelings make for the data collected? Don’t we spend a long time trying to teach researchers to be objective and remove their values from the scientific method?

Like ontology and epistemology, the import of axiology is typically built into research projects and exists “below the surface”. You might not consciously engage with values in a research project, but they are still there. Similarly, you might not hear many researchers refer to their axiological commitments but they might well talk about their values and ethics, their positionality, or a commitment to social justice.

Our values focus and motivate our research. These values could include a commitment to scientific rigor, or to always act ethically as a researcher. At a more general level we might ask: What matters? Why do research at all? How does it contribute to human wellbeing? Almost all research projects are grounded in trying to answer a question that matters or has consequences. Some research projects are even explicit in their intention to improve things rather than observe them. This is most closely associated with “critical” approaches.

Critical and radical views of science focus on how to spread knowledge and information in a way that combats oppression. These questions are central for creating research projects that fight against the objective structures of oppression—like unequal pay—and their subjective counterparts in the mind—like internalized sexism. For example, a more critical research project would fight not only against statutes of limitations for sexual assault but on how women have internalized rape culture as well. Its explicit goal would be to fight oppression and to inform practice on women’s liberation. For this reason, creating change is baked into the research questions and methods used in more critical and radical research projects.

As part of studying radical change and oppression, we are likely employing a model of science that puts values front-and-center within a research project. All social work research is values-driven, as we are a values-driven profession. Historically, though, most social scientists have argued for values-free science. Scientists agree that science helps human progress, but they hold that researchers should remain as objective as possible—which means putting aside politics and personal values that might bias their results, similar to the cognitive biases we discussed in section 1.1. Over the course of last century, this perspective was challenged by scientists who approached research from an explicitly political and values-driven perspective. As we discussed earlier in this section, feminist critiques strive to understand how sexism biases research questions, samples, measures, and conclusions, while decolonization critiques try to de-center the Western perspective of science and truth.

Linking axiology, epistemology, and ontology

It is important to note that both values-central and values-neutral perspectives are useful in furthering social justice. Values-neutral science is helpful at predicting phenomena. Indeed, it matches well with objectivist ontologies and epistemologies. Let’s examine a measure of depression, the Patient Health Questionnaire (PSQ-9) . The authors of this measure spent years creating a measure that accurately and reliably measures the concept of depression. This measure is assumed to measure depression in any person, and scales like this are often translated into other languages (and subsequently validated) for more widespread use . The goal is to measure depression in a valid and reliable manner. We can use this objective measure to predict relationships with other risk and protective factors, such as substance use or poverty, as well as evaluate the impact of evidence-based treatments for depression like narrative therapy.

While measures like the PSQ-9 help with prediction, they do not allow you to understand an individual person’s experience of depression. To do so, you need to listen to their stories and how they make sense of the world. The goal of understanding isn’t to predict what will happen next, but to empathically connect with the person and truly understand what’s happening from their perspective. Understanding fits best in subjectivist epistemologies and ontologies, as they allow for multiple truths (i.e. that multiple interpretations of the same situation are valid). Although all researchers addressing depression are working towards socially just ends, the values commitments researchers make as part of the research process influence them to adopt objective or subjective ontologies and epistemologies.

What role will values play in your study?

Are you looking to be as objective as possible, putting aside your own values?
Or are you infusing values into each aspect of your research design?

Remember that although social work is a values-based profession, that does not mean that all social work research is values-informed. The majority of social work research is objective and tries to be value-neutral in how it approaches research.

Philosophical assumptions, as a whole

As you engage with theoretical and empirical information in social work, keep these philosophical assumptions in mind. They are useful shortcuts to understanding the deeper ideas and assumptions behind the construction of knowledge. See Table 7.1 below for a short reference list of the key assumptions we covered in sections 7.1 and 7.2. The purpose of exploring these philosophical assumptions isn’t to find out which is true and which is false. Instead, the goal is to identify the assumptions that fit with how you think about your working question and your personal worldview.

Feminist, anti-racist, and decolonization critiques of science highlight the often hidden oppressive ideas and structures in science.
Even though social work is a values-based discipline, most social work research projects are values-neutral because those assumptions fit with the researcher’s question.
Using your understanding of the conflicts in Table 7.1 and explored in sections 7.1 and 7.2, critique the following (deliberately problematic) statement:

“When a scientist observes the social world, he does so objectively.”

7.3 Social work research paradigms

Distinguish between the three major research paradigms in social work and apply the assumptions upon which they are built to a student research project

In the previous two sections, we reviewed the three elements to the philosophical foundation of a research method: ontology, epistemology and axiology (Crotty, 1998; Guba & Lincoln, 1994; Heron & Reason, 1997). [17] In this section, you will explore how to apply these philosophical approaches to your research project. In the next section, we will do the same for theory. Keep in mind that it’s easy for us as textbook authors to lay out each step (paradigm, theory, etc.) sequentially, but in reality, research projects are not linear. Researchers rarely proceed by choosing an ontology, epistemology and axiology separately and then deciding which theory and methods to apply. As we discussed in Chapter 2 when you started conceptualizing your project, you should choose something that interests you, is feasible to conduct, and does not pose unethical risks to others. Whatever part or parts your project you have figured out right now, you’re right where you should be—in the middle of conceptualization.

How do scientific ideas change over time?

Much like your ideas develop over time as you learn more, so does the body of scientific knowledge. Kuhn’s (1962) [18] The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most influential works on the philosophy of science, and is credited with introducing the idea of competing paradigms (or “disciplinary matrices”) in research. Kuhn investigated the way that scientific practices evolve over time, arguing that we don’t have a simple progression from “less knowledge” to “more knowledge” because the way that we approach inquiry is changing over time. This can happen gradually, but the process results in moments of change where our understanding of a phenomenon changes more radically (such as in the transition from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics; or from Lamarckian to Darwinian theories of evolution). For a social work practice example, Fleuridas & Krafcik (2019) [19] trace the development of the “four forces” of psychotherapy , from psychodynamics to behaviorism to humanism as well as the competition among emerging perspectives to establish itself as the fourth force to guide psychotherapeutic practice. But how did the problems in one paradigm inspire new paradigms? Kuhn presents us with a way of understanding the history of scientific development across all topics and disciplines.

As you can see in this video from Matthew J. Brown (CC-BY), there are four stages in the cycle of science in Kuhn’s approach. Firstly, a pre-paradigmatic state where competing approaches share no consensus. Secondly, the “normal” state where there is wide acceptance of a particular set of methods and assumptions. Thirdly, a state of crisis where anomalies that cannot be solved within the existing paradigm emerge and competing theories to address them follow. Fourthly, a revolutionary phase where some new paradigmatic approach becomes dominant and supplants the old. Shnieder (2009) [20] suggests that the Kuhnian phases are characterized by different kinds of scientific activity.

Newer approaches often build upon rather than replace older ones, but they also overlap and can exist within a state of competition. Scientists working within a particular paradigm often share methods, assumptions and values. In addition to supporting specific methods, research paradigms also influence things like the ambition and nature of research, the researcher-participant relationship and how the role of the researcher is understood.

Paradigm vs. theory

The terms ‘ paradigm ‘ and ‘ theory ‘ are often used interchangeably in social science. There is not a consensus among social scientists as to whether these are identical or distinct concepts. With that said, in this text, we will make a clear distinction between the two ideas because thinking about each concept separately is more useful for our purposes.

We define paradigm a set of common philosophical (ontological, epistemological, and axiological) assumptions that inform research. The four paradigms we describe in this section refer to patterns in how groups of researchers resolve philosophical questions. Some assumptions naturally make sense together, and paradigms grow out of researchers with shared assumptions about what is important and how to study it. Paradigms are like “analytic lenses” and a provide framework on top of which we can build theoretical and empirical knowledge (Kuhn, 1962). [21] Consider this video of an interview with world-famous physicist Richard Feynman in which he explains why “when you explain a ‘why,’ you have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true. Otherwise, you are perpetually asking why.” In order to answer basic physics question like “what is happening when two magnets attract?” or a social work research question like “what is the impact of this therapeutic intervention on depression,” you must understand the assumptions you are making about social science and the social world. Paradigmatic assumptions about objective and subjective truth support methodological choices like whether to conduct interviews or send out surveys, for example.

While paradigms are broad philosophical assumptions, theory is more specific, and refers to a set of concepts and relationships scientists use to explain the social world. Theories are more concrete, while paradigms are more abstract. Look back to Figure 7.1 at the beginning of this chapter. Theory helps you identify the concepts and relationships that align with your paradigmatic understanding of the problem. Moreover, theory informs how you will measure the concepts in your research question and the design of your project.

For both theories and paradigms, Kuhn’s observation of scientific paradigms, crises, and revolutions is instructive for understanding the history of science. Researchers inherit institutions, norms, and ideas that are marked by the battlegrounds of theoretical and paradigmatic debates that stretch back hundreds of years. We have necessarily simplified this history into four paradigms: positivism, interpretivism, critical, and pragmatism. Our framework and explanation are inspired by the framework of Guba and Lincoln (1990) [22] and Burrell and Morgan (1979). [23] while also incorporating pragmatism as a way of resolving paradigmatic questions. Most of social work research and theory can be classified as belonging to one of these four paradigms, though this classification system represents only one of many useful approaches to analyzing social science research paradigms.

Building on our discussion in section 7.1 on objective vs. subjective epistemologies and ontologies, we will start with the difference between positivism and interpretivism. Afterward, we will link our discussion of axiology in section 7.2 with the critical paradigm. Finally, we will situate pragmatism as a way to resolve paradigmatic questions strategically. The difference between positivism and interpretivism is a good place to start, since the critical paradigm and pragmatism build on their philosophical insights.

It’s important to think of paradigms less as distinct categories and more as a spectrum along which projects might fall. For example, some projects may be somewhat positivist, somewhat interpretivist, and a little critical. No project fits perfectly into one paradigm. Additionally, there is no paradigm that is more correct than the other. Each paradigm uses assumptions that are logically consistent, and when combined, are a useful approach to understanding the social world using science. The purpose of this section is to acquaint you with what research projects in each paradigm look like and how they are grounded in philosophical assumptions about social science.

You should read this section to situate yourself in terms of what paradigm feels most “at home” to both you as a person and to your project. You may find, as I have, that your research projects are more conventional and less radical than what feels most like home to you, personally. In a research project, however, students should start with their working question rather than their heart. Use the paradigm that fits with your question the best, rather than which paradigm you think fits you the best.

Positivism: Researcher as “expert”

Positivism has its roots in the scientific revolution of the Enlightenment. Positivism is based on the idea that we can come to know facts about the natural world through our experiences of it. The processes that support this are the logical and analytic classification and systemization of these experiences. Through this process of empirical analysis, Positivists aim to arrive at descriptions of law-like relationships and mechanisms that govern the world we experience.

Positivists have traditionally claimed that the only authentic knowledge we have of the world is empirical and scientific. Essentially, positivism downplays any gap between our experiences of the world and the way the world really is; instead, positivism determines objective “facts” through the correct methodological combination of observation and analysis. Data collection methods typically include quantitative measurement, which is supposed to overcome the individual biases of the researcher.

Positivism aspires to high standards of validity and reliability supported by evidence, and has been applied extensively in both physical and social sciences. Its goal is familiar to all students of science: iteratively expanding the evidence base of what we know is true. We can know our observations and analysis describe real world phenomena because researchers separate themselves and objectively observe the world, placing a deep epistemological separation between “the knower” and “what is known” and reducing the possibility of bias. We can all see the logic in separating yourself as much as possible from your study so as not to bias it, even if we know we cannot do so perfectly.

However, the criticism often made of positivism with regard to human and social sciences (e.g. education, psychology, sociology) is that positivism is scientistic ; which is to say that it overlooks differences between the objects in the natural world (tables, atoms, cells, etc.) and the subjects in the social work (self-aware people living in a complex socio-historical context). In pursuit of the generalizable truth of “hard” science, it fails to adequately explain the many aspects of human experience don’t conform to this way of collecting data. Furthermore, by viewing science as an idealized pursuit of pure knowledge, positivists may ignore the many ways in which power structures our access to scientific knowledge, the tools to create it, and the capital to participate in the scientific community.

Kivunja & Kuyini (2017) [24] describe the essential features of positivism as:

A belief that theory is universal and law-like generalizations can be made across contexts
The assumption that context is not important
The belief that truth or knowledge is ‘out there to be discovered’ by research
The belief that cause and effect are distinguishable and analytically separable
The belief that results of inquiry can be quantified
The belief that theory can be used to predict and to control outcomes
The belief that research should follow the scientific method of investigation
Rests on formulation and testing of hypotheses
Employs empirical or analytical approaches
Pursues an objective search for facts
Believes in ability to observe knowledge
The researcher’s ultimate aim is to establish a comprehensive universal theory, to account for human and social behavior
Application of the scientific method

Many quantitative researchers now identify as postpositivist. Postpositivism retains the idea that truth should be considered objective, but asserts that our experiences of such truths are necessarily imperfect because they are ameliorated by our values and experiences. Understanding how postpositivism has updated itself in light of the developments in other research paradigms is instructive for developing your own paradigmatic framework. Epistemologically, postpositivists operate on the assumption that human knowledge is based not on the assessments from an objective individual, but rather upon human conjectures. As human knowledge is thus unavoidably conjectural and uncertain, though assertions about what is true and why it is true can be modified or withdrawn in the light of further investigation. However, postpositivism is not a form of relativism, and generally retains the idea of objective truth.

These epistemological assumptions are based on ontological assumptions that an objective reality exists, but contra positivists, they believe reality can be known only imperfectly and probabilistically. While positivists believe that research is or can be value-free or value-neutral, postpositivists take the position that bias is undesired but inevitable, and therefore the investigator must work to detect and try to correct it. Postpositivists work to understand how their axiology (i.e., values and beliefs) may have influenced their research, including through their choice of measures, populations, questions, and definitions, as well as through their interpretation and analysis of their work. Methodologically, they use mixed methods and both quantitative and qualitative methods, accepting the problematic nature of “objective” truths and seeking to find ways to come to a better, yet ultimately imperfect understanding of what is true. A popular form of postpositivism is critical realism , which lies between positivism and interpretivism.

Is positivism right for your project?

Positivism is concerned with understanding what is true for everybody. Social workers whose working question fits best with the positivist paradigm will want to produce data that are generalizable and can speak to larger populations. For this reason, positivistic researchers favor quantitative methods—probability sampling, experimental or survey design, and multiple, and well-established instruments to measure key concepts.

A positivist orientation to research is appropriate when your research question asks for generalizable truths. For example, your working question may look something like : does my agency’s housing intervention lead to fewer periods of homelessness for our clients? It is necessary to study such a relationship quantitatively and objectively. When social workers speak about social problems impacting societies and individuals, they reference positivist research, including experiments and surveys of the general populations. Positivist research is exceptionally good at producing cause-and-effect explanations that apply across many different situations and groups of people. There are many good reasons why positivism is the dominant research paradigm in the social sciences.

Critiques of positivism stem from two major issues. First and foremost, positivism may not fit the messy, contradictory, and circular world of human relationships. A positivistic approach does not allow the researcher to understand another person’s subjective mental state in detail. This is because the positivist orientation focuses on quantifiable, generalizable data—and therefore encompasses only a small fraction of what may be true in any given situation. This critique is emblematic of the interpretivist paradigm, which we will describe next.

In the section after that, we will describe the critical paradigm, which critiques the positivist paradigm (and the interpretivist paradigm) for focusing too little on social change, values, and oppression. Positivists assume they know what is true, but they often do not incorporate the knowledge and experiences of oppressed people, even when those community members are directly impacted by the research. Positivism has been critiqued as ethnocentrist, patriarchal, and classist (Kincheloe & Tobin, 2009). [25] This leads them to do research on , rather than with populations by excluding them from the conceptualization, design, and impact of a project, a topic we discussed in section 2.4. It also leads them to ignore the historical and cultural context that is important to understanding the social world. The result can be a one-dimensional and reductionist view of reality.

From your literature search, identify an empirical article that uses quantitative methods to answer a research question similar to your working question or about your research topic.
Review the assumptions of the positivist research paradigm.
Discuss in a few sentences how the author’s conclusions are based on some of these paradigmatic assumptions. How might a researcher operating from a different paradigm (e.g., interpretivism, critical) critique these assumptions as well as the conclusions of this study?

Interpretivism: Researcher as “empathizer”

Positivism is focused on generalizable truth. Interpretivism , by contrast, develops from the idea that we want to understand the truths of individuals, how they interpret and experience the world, their thought processes, and the social structures that emerge from sharing those interpretations through language and behavior. The process of interpretation (or social construction) is guided by the empathy of the researcher to understand the meaning behind what other people say.

Historically, interpretivism grew out of a specific critique of positivism: that knowledge in the human and social sciences cannot conform to the model of natural science because there are features of human experience that cannot objectively be “known”. The tools we use to understand objects that have no self-awareness may not be well-attuned to subjective experiences like emotions, understandings, values, feelings, socio-cultural factors, historical influences, and other meaningful aspects of social life. Instead of finding a single generalizable “truth,” the interpretivist researcher aims to generate understanding and often adopts a relativist position.

While positivists seek “the truth,” the social constructionist framework argues that “truth” varies. Truth differs based on who you ask, and people change what they believe is true based on social interactions. These subjective truths also exist within social and historical contexts, and our understanding of truth varies across communities and time periods. This is because we, according to this paradigm, create reality ourselves through our social interactions and our interpretations of those interactions. Key to the interpretivist perspective is the idea that social context and interaction frame our realities.

Researchers operating within this framework take keen interest in how people come to socially agree, or disagree, about what is real and true. Consider how people, depending on their social and geographical context, ascribe different meanings to certain hand gestures. When a person raises their middle finger, those of us in Western cultures will probably think that this person isn’t very happy (not to mention the person at whom the middle finger is being directed!). In other societies around the world, a thumbs-up gesture, rather than a middle finger, signifies discontent (Wong, 2007). [26] The fact that these hand gestures have different meanings across cultures aptly demonstrates that those meanings are socially and collectively constructed. What, then, is the “truth” of the middle finger or thumbs up? As we’ve seen in this section, the truth depends on the intention of the person making the gesture, the interpretation of the person receiving it, and the social context in which the action occurred.

Qualitative methods are preferred as ways to investigate these phenomena. Data collected might be unstructured (or “messy”) and correspondingly a range of techniques for approaching data collection have been developed. Interpretivism acknowledges that it is impossible to remove cultural and individual influence from research, often instead making a virtue of the positionality of the researcher and the socio-cultural context of a study.

One common objection positivists levy against interpretivists is that interpretivism tends to emphasize the subjective over the objective. If the starting point for an investigation is that we can’t fully and objectively know the world, how can we do research into this without everything being a matter of opinion? For the positivist, this risk for confirmation bias as well as invalid and unreliable measures makes interpretivist research unscientific. Clearly, we disagree with this assessment, and you should, too. Positivism and interpretivism have different ontologies and epistemologies with contrasting notions of rigor and validity (for more information on assumptions about measurement, see Chapter 11 for quantitative validity and reliability and Chapter 20 for qualitative rigor). Nevertheless, both paradigms apply the values and concepts of the scientific method through systematic investigation of the social world, even if their assumptions lead them to do so in different ways. Interpretivist research often embraces a relativist epistemology, bringing together different perspectives in search of a trustworthy and authentic understanding or narrative.

Kivunja & Kuyini (2017) [27] describe the essential features of interpretivism as:

The belief that truths are multiple and socially constructed
The acceptance that there is inevitable interaction between the researcher and his or her research participants
The acceptance that context is vital for knowledge and knowing
The belief that knowledge can be value laden and the researcher’s values need to be made explicit
The need to understand specific cases and contexts rather deriving universal laws that apply to everyone, everywhere.
The belief that causes and effects are mutually interdependent, and that causality may be circular or contradictory
The belief that contextual factors need to be taken into consideration in any systematic pursuit of understanding

One important clarification: it’s important to think of the interpretivist perspective as not just about individual interpretations but the social life of interpretations. While individuals may construct their own realities, groups—from a small one such as a married couple to large ones such as nations—often agree on notions of what is true and what “is” and what “is not.” In other words, the meanings that we construct have power beyond the individuals who create them. Therefore, the ways that people and communities act based on such meanings is of as much interest to interpretivists as how they were created in the first place. Theories like social constructionism, phenomenology, and symbolic interactionism are often used in concert with interpretivism.

Is interpretivism right for your project?

An interpretivist orientation to research is appropriate when your working question asks about subjective truths. The cause-and-effect relationships that interpretivist studies produce are specific to the time and place in which the study happened, rather than a generalizable objective truth. More pragmatically, if you picture yourself having a conversation with participants like an interview or focus group, then interpretivism is likely going to be a major influence for your study.

Positivists critique the interpretivist paradigm as non-scientific. They view the interpretivist focus on subjectivity and values as sources of bias. Positivists and interpretivists differ on the degree to which social phenomena are like natural phenomena. Positivists believe that the assumptions of the social sciences and natural sciences are the same, while interpretivists strongly believe that social sciences differ from the natural sciences because their subjects are social creatures.

Similarly, the critical paradigm finds fault with the interpretivist focus on the status quo rather than social change. Although interpretivists often proceed from a feminist or other standpoint theory, the focus is less on liberation than on understanding the present from multiple perspectives. Other critical theorists may object to the consensus orientation of interpretivist research. By searching for commonalities between people’s stories, they may erase the uniqueness of each individual’s story. For example, while interpretivists may arrive at a consensus definition of what the experience of “coming out” is like for people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer, it cannot represent the diversity of each person’s unique “coming out” experience and what it meant to them. For example, see Rosario and colleagues’ (2009) [28] critique the literature on lesbians “coming out” because previous studies did not addressing how appearing, behaving, or identifying as a butch or femme impacted the experience of “coming out” for lesbians.

From your literature search, identify an empirical article that uses qualitative methods to answer a research question similar to your working question or about your research topic.
Review the assumptions of the interpretivist research paradigm.
Discuss in a few sentences how the author’s conclusions are based on some of these paradigmatic assumptions. How might a researcher operating from a different paradigm (like positivism or the critical paradigm) critique the conclusions of this study?

Critical paradigm: Researcher as “activist”

As we’ve discussed a bit in the preceding sections, the critical paradigm focuses on power, inequality, and social change. Although some rather diverse perspectives are included here, the critical paradigm, in general, includes ideas developed by early social theorists, such as Max Horkheimer (Calhoun et al., 2007), [29] and later works developed by feminist scholars, such as Nancy Fraser (1989). [30] Unlike the positivist paradigm, the critical paradigm assumes that social science can never be truly objective or value-free. Furthermore, this paradigm operates from the perspective that scientific investigation should be conducted with the express goal of social change. Researchers in the critical paradigm foreground axiology, positionality and values . In contrast with the detached, “objective” observations associated with the positivist researcher, critical approaches make explicit the intention for research to act as a transformative or emancipatory force within and beyond the study.

Researchers in the critical paradigm might start with the knowledge that systems are biased against certain groups, such as women or ethnic minorities, building upon previous theory and empirical data. Moreover, their research projects are designed not only to collect data, but to impact the participants as well as the systems being studied. The critical paradigm applies its study of power and inequality to change those power imbalances as part of the research process itself. If this sounds familiar to you, you may remember hearing similar ideas when discussing social conflict theory in your human behavior in the social environment (HBSE) class. [31] Because of this focus on social change, the critical paradigm is a natural home for social work research. However, we fall far short of adopting this approach widely in our profession’s research efforts.

Is the critical paradigm right for your project?

Every social work research project impacts social justice in some way. What distinguishes critical research is how it integrates an analysis of power into the research process itself. Critical research is appropriate for projects that are activist in orientation. For example, critical research projects should have working questions that explicitly seek to raise the consciousness of an oppressed group or collaborate equitably with community members and clients to addresses issues of concern. Because of their transformative potential, critical research projects can be incredibly rewarding to complete. However, partnerships take a long time to develop and social change can evolve slowly on an issue, making critical research projects a more challenging fit for student research projects which must be completed under a tight deadline with few resources.

Positivists critique the critical paradigm on multiple fronts. First and foremost, the focus on oppression and values as part of the research process is seen as likely to bias the research process, most problematically, towards confirmation bias. If you start out with the assumption that oppression exists and must be dealt with, then you are likely to find that regardless of whether it is truly there or not. Similarly, positivists may fault critical researchers for focusing on how the world should be, rather than how it truly is . In this, they may focus too much on theoretical and abstract inquiry and less on traditional experimentation and empirical inquiry. Finally, the goal of social transformation is seen as inherently unscientific, as science is not a political practice.

Interpretivists often find common cause with critical researchers. Feminist studies, for example, may explore the perspectives of women while centering gender-based oppression as part of the research process. In interpretivist research, the focus is less on radical change as part of the research process and more on small, incremental changes based on the results and conclusions drawn from the research project. Additionally, some critical researchers’ focus on individuality of experience is in stark contrast to the consensus-orientation of interpretivists. Interpretivists seek to understand people’s true selves. Some critical theorists argue that people have multiple selves or no self at all.

From your literature search, identify an article relevant to your working question or broad research topic that uses a critical perspective. You should look for articles where the authors are clear that they are applying a critical approach to research like feminism, anti-racism, Marxism and critical theory, decolonization, anti-oppressive practice, or other social justice-focused theoretical perspectives. To target your search further, include keywords in your queries to research methods commonly used in the critical paradigm like participatory action research and community-based participatory research. If you have trouble identifying an article for this exercise, consult your professor for some help. These articles may be more challenging to find, but reviewing one is necessary to get a feel for what research in this paradigm is like.
Review the assumptions of the critical research paradigm.
Discuss in a few sentences how the author’s conclusions are based on some of these paradigmatic assumptions. How might a researcher operating from different assumptions (like values-neutrality or researcher as neutral and unbiased) critique the conclusions of this study?

Pragmatism: Researcher as “strategist”

“Essentially, all models are wrong but some are useful.” (Box, 1976) [32]

Pragmatism is a research paradigm that suspends questions of philosophical ‘truth’ and focuses more on how different philosophies, theories, and methods can be used strategically to provide a multidimensional view of a topic. Researchers employing pragmatism will mix elements of positivist, interpretivist, and critical research depending on the purpose of a particular project and the practical constraints faced by the researcher and their research context. We favor this approach for student projects because it avoids getting bogged down in choosing the “right” paradigm and instead focuses on the assumptions that help you answer your question, given the limitations of your research context. Student research projects are completed quickly and moving in the direction of pragmatism can be a route to successfully completing a project. Your project is a representation of what you think is feasible, ethical, and important enough for you to study.

The crucial consideration for the pragmatist is whether the outcomes of research have any real-world application, rather than whether they are “true.” The methods, theories, and philosophies chosen by pragmatic researchers are guided by their working question. There are no distinctively pragmatic research methods since this approach is about making judicious use whichever methods fit best with the problem under investigation. Pragmatic approaches may be less likely to prioritize ontological, epistemological or axiological consistency when combining different research methods. Instead, the emphasis is on solving a pressing problem and adapting to the limitations and opportunities in the researchers’ context.

Adopt a multi-paradigmatic perspective

Believe it or not, there is a long literature of acrimonious conflict between scientists from positivist, interpretivist, and critical camps (see Heineman-Pieper et al., 2002 [33] for a longer discussion). Pragmatism is an old idea, but it is appealing precisely because it attempts to resolve the problem of multiple incompatible philosophical assumptions in social science. To a pragmatist, there is no “correct” paradigm. All paradigms rely on assumptions about the social world that are the subject of philosophical debate. Each paradigm is an incomplete understanding of the world, and it requires a scientific community using all of them to gain a comprehensive view of the social world. This multi-paradigmatic perspective is a unique gift of social work research, as our emphasis on empathy and social change makes us more critical of positivism, the dominant paradigm in social science.

We offered the metaphors of expert, empathizer, activist, and strategist for each paradigm. It’s important not to take these labels too seriously. For example, some may view that scientists should be experts or that activists are biased and unscientific. Nevertheless, we hope that these metaphors give you a sense of what it feels like to conduct research within each paradigm.

One of the unique aspects of paradigmatic thinking is that often where you think you are most at home may actually be the opposite of where your research project is. For example, in my graduate and doctoral education, I thought I was a critical researcher. In fact, I thought I was a radical researcher focused on social change and transformation. Yet, often times when I sit down to conceptualize and start a research project, I find myself squarely in the positivist paradigm, thinking through neat cause-and-effect relationships that can be mathematically measured. There is nothing wrong with that! Your task for your research project is to find the paradigm that best matches your research question. Think through what you really want to study and how you think about the topic, then use assumptions of that paradigm to guide your inquiry.

Another important lesson is that no research project fits perfectly in one paradigm or another. Instead, there is a spectrum along which studies are, to varying degrees, interpretivist, positivist, and critical. For example, all social work research is a bit activist in that our research projects are designed to inform action for change on behalf of clients and systems. However, some projects will focus on the conclusions and implications of projects informing social change (i.e., positivist and interpretivist projects) while others will partner with community members and design research projects collaboratively in a way that leads to social change (i.e. critical projects). In section 7.5, we will describe a pragmatic approach to research design guided by your paradigmatic and theoretical framework.

Social work research falls, to some degree, in each of the four paradigms: positivism, interpretivism, critical, and pragmatist.
Adopting a pragmatic, multi-paradigmatic approach to research makes sense for student researchers, as it directs students to use the philosophical assumptions and methodological approaches that best match their research question and research context.
Research in all paradigms is necessary to come to a comprehensive understanding of a topic, and social workers must be able to understand and apply knowledge from each research paradigm.
Describe which paradigm best fits your perspective on the world and which best fits with your project.
Identify any similarities and differences in your personal assumptions and the assumption your research project relies upon. For example, are you a more critical and radical thinker but have chosen a more “expert” role for yourself in your research project?

7.4 Developing your theoretical framework

Differentiate between theories that explain specific parts of the social world versus those that are more broad and sweeping in their conclusions
Identify the theoretical perspectives that are relevant to your project and inform your thinking about it
Define key concepts in your working question and develop a theoretical framework for how you understand your topic.

Much like paradigms, theories provide a way of looking at the world and of understanding human interaction. Paradigms are grounded in big assumptions about the world—what is real, how do we create knowledge—whereas theories describe more specific phenomena. Well, we are still oversimplifying a bit. Some theories try to explain the whole world, while others only try to explain a small part. Some theories can be grouped together based on common ideas but retain their own individual and unique features. Our goal is to help you find a theoretical framework that helps you understand your topic more deeply and answer your working question.

Theories: Big and small

In your human behavior and the social environment (HBSE) class, you were introduced to the major theoretical perspectives that are commonly used in social work. These are what we like to call big-T ‘T’heories. When you read about systems theory, you are actually reading a synthesis of decades of distinct, overlapping, and conflicting theories that can be broadly classified within systems theory. For example, within systems theory, some approaches focus more on family systems while others focus on environmental systems, though the core concepts remain similar.

Different theorists define concepts in their own way, and as a result, their theories may explore different relationships with those concepts. For example, Deci and Ryan’s (1985) [34] self-determination theory discusses motivation and establishes that it is contingent on meeting one’s needs for autonomy, competency, and relatedness. By contrast, ecological self-determination theory, as written by Abery & Stancliffe (1996), [35] argues that self-determination is the amount of control exercised by an individual over aspects of their lives they deem important across the micro, meso, and macro levels. If self-determination were an important concept in your study, you would need to figure out which of the many theories related to self-determination helps you address your working question.

Theories can provide a broad perspective on the key concepts and relationships in the world or more specific and applied concepts and perspectives. Table 7.2 summarizes two commonly used lists of big-T Theoretical perspectives in social work. See if you can locate some of the theories that might inform your project.

Competing theoretical explanations

Within each area of specialization in social work, there are many other theories that aim to explain more specific types of interactions. For example, within the study of sexual harassment, different theories posit different explanations for why harassment occurs.

One theory, first developed by criminologists, is called routine activities theory. It posits that sexual harassment is most likely to occur when a workplace lacks unified groups and when potentially vulnerable targets and motivated offenders are both present (DeCoster, Estes, & Mueller, 1999). [38]

Other theories of sexual harassment, called relational theories, suggest that one’s existing relationships are the key to understanding why and how workplace sexual harassment occurs and how people will respond when it does occur (Morgan, 1999). [39] Relational theories focus on the power that different social relationships provide (e.g., married people who have supportive partners at home might be more likely than those who lack support at home to report sexual harassment when it occurs).

Finally, feminist theories of sexual harassment take a different stance. These theories posit that the organization of our current gender system, wherein those who are the most masculine have the most power, best explains the occurrence of workplace sexual harassment (MacKinnon, 1979). [40] As you might imagine, which theory a researcher uses to examine the topic of sexual harassment will shape the questions asked about harassment. It will also shape the explanations the researcher provides for why harassment occurs.

For a graduate student beginning their study of a new topic, it may be intimidating to learn that there are so many theories beyond what you’ve learned in your theory classes. What’s worse is that there is no central database of theories on your topic. However, as you review the literature in your area, you will learn more about the theories scientists have created to explain how your topic works in the real world. There are other good sources for theories, in addition to journal articles. Books often contain works of theoretical and philosophical importance that are beyond the scope of an academic journal. Do a search in your university library for books on your topic, and you are likely to find theorists talking about how to make sense of your topic. You don’t necessarily have to agree with the prevailing theories about your topic, but you do need to be aware of them so you can apply theoretical ideas to your project.

Applying big-T theories to your topic

The key to applying theories to your topic is learning the key concepts associated with that theory and the relationships between those concepts, or propositions . Again, your HBSE class should have prepared you with some of the most important concepts from the theoretical perspectives listed in Table 7.2. For example, the conflict perspective sees the world as divided into dominant and oppressed groups who engage in conflict over resources. If you were applying these theoretical ideas to your project, you would need to identify which groups in your project are considered dominant or oppressed groups, and which resources they were struggling over. This is a very general example. Challenge yourself to find small-t theories about your topic that will help you understand it in much greater detail and specificity. If you have chosen a topic that is relevant to your life and future practice, you will be doing valuable work shaping your ideas towards social work practice.

Integrating theory into your project can be easy, or it can take a bit more effort. Some people have a strong and explicit theoretical perspective that they carry with them at all times. For me, you’ll probably see my work drawing from exchange and choice, social constructionist, and critical theory. Maybe you have theoretical perspectives you naturally employ, like Afrocentric theory or person-centered practice. If so, that’s a great place to start since you might already be using that theory (even subconsciously) to inform your understanding of your topic. But if you aren’t aware of whether you are using a theoretical perspective when you think about your topic, try writing a paragraph off the top of your head or talking with a friend explaining what you think about that topic. Try matching it with some of the ideas from the broad theoretical perspectives from Table 7.2. This can ground you as you search for more specific theories. Some studies are designed to test whether theories apply the real world while others are designed to create new theories or variations on existing theories. Consider which feels more appropriate for your project and what you want to know.

Another way to easily identify the theories associated with your topic is to look at the concepts in your working question. Are these concepts commonly found in any of the theoretical perspectives in Table 7.2? Take a look at the Payne and Hutchison texts and see if any of those look like the concepts and relationships in your working question or if any of them match with how you think about your topic. Even if they don’t possess the exact same wording, similar theories can help serve as a starting point to finding other theories that can inform your project. Remember, HBSE textbooks will give you not only the broad statements of theories but also sources from specific theorists and sub-theories that might be more applicable to your topic. Skim the references and suggestions for further reading once you find something that applies well.

Choose a theoretical perspective from Hutchison, Payne, or another theory textbook that is relevant to your project. Using their textbooks or other reputable sources, identify :

At least five important concepts from the theory
What relationships the theory establishes between these important concepts (e.g., as x increases, the y decreases)
How you can use this theory to better understand the concepts and variables in your project?

Developing your own theoretical framework

Hutchison’s and Payne’s frameworks are helpful for surveying the whole body of literature relevant to social work, which is why they are so widely used. They are one framework, or way of thinking, about all of the theories social workers will encounter that are relevant to practice. Social work researchers should delve further and develop a theoretical or conceptual framework of their own based on their reading of the literature. In Chapter 8 , we will develop your theoretical framework further, identifying the cause-and-effect relationships that answer your working question. Developing a theoretical framework is also instructive for revising and clarifying your working question and identifying concepts that serve as keywords for additional literature searching. The greater clarity you have with your theoretical perspective, the easier each subsequent step in the research process will be.

Getting acquainted with the important theoretical concepts in a new area can be challenging. While social work education provides a broad overview of social theory, you will find much greater fulfillment out of reading about the theories related to your topic area. We discussed some strategies for finding theoretical information in Chapter 3 as part of literature searching. To extend that conversation a bit, some strategies for searching for theories in the literature include:

Consider searching for these keywords in the title or abstract, specifically
Looking at the references and cited by links within theoretical articles and textbooks
Looking at books, edited volumes, and textbooks that discuss theory
Talking with a scholar on your topic, or asking a professor if they can help connect you to someone
Nice authors are clear about how they use theory to inform their research project, usually in the introduction and discussion section.
For example, from the broad umbrella of systems theory, you might pick out family systems theory if you want to understand the effectiveness of a family counseling program.

It’s important to remember that knowledge arises within disciplines, and that disciplines have different theoretical frameworks for explaining the same topic. While it is certainly important for the social work perspective to be a part of your analysis, social workers benefit from searching across disciplines to come to a more comprehensive understanding of the topic. Reaching across disciplines can provide uncommon insights during conceptualization, and once the study is completed, a multidisciplinary researcher will be able to share results in a way that speaks to a variety of audiences. A study by An and colleagues (2015) [41] uses game theory from the discipline of economics to understand problems in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. In order to receive TANF benefits, mothers must cooperate with paternity and child support requirements unless they have “good cause,” as in cases of domestic violence, in which providing that information would put the mother at greater risk of violence. Game theory can help us understand how TANF recipients and caseworkers respond to the incentives in their environment, and highlight why the design of the “good cause” waiver program may not achieve its intended outcome of increasing access to benefits for survivors of family abuse.

Of course, there are natural limits on the depth with which student researchers can and should engage in a search for theory about their topic. At minimum, you should be able to draw connections across studies and be able to assess the relative importance of each theory within the literature. Just because you found one article applying your theory (like game theory, in our example above) does not mean it is important or often used in the domestic violence literature. Indeed, it would be much more common in the family violence literature to find psychological theories of trauma, feminist theories of power and control, and similar theoretical perspectives used to inform research projects rather than game theory, which is equally applicable to survivors of family violence as workers and bosses at a corporation. Consider using the Cited By feature to identify articles, books, and other sources of theoretical information that are seminal or well-cited in the literature. Similarly, by using the name of a theory in the keywords of a search query (along with keywords related to your topic), you can get a sense of how often the theory is used in your topic area. You should have a sense of what theories are commonly used to analyze your topic, even if you end up choosing a different one to inform your project.

Theories that are not cited or used as often are still immensely valuable. As we saw before with TANF and “good cause” waivers, using theories from other disciplines can produce uncommon insights and help you make a new contribution to the social work literature. Given the privileged position that the social work curriculum places on theories developed by white men, students may want to explore Afrocentricity as a social work practice theory (Pellebon, 2007) [42] or abolitionist social work (Jacobs et al., 2021) [43] when deciding on a theoretical framework for their research project that addresses concepts of racial justice. Start with your working question, and explain how each theory helps you answer your question. Some explanations are going to feel right, and some concepts will feel more salient to you than others. Keep in mind that this is an iterative process. Your theoretical framework will likely change as you continue to conceptualize your research project, revise your research question, and design your study.

By trying on many different theoretical explanations for your topic area, you can better clarify your own theoretical framework. Some of you may be fortunate enough to find theories that match perfectly with how you think about your topic, are used often in the literature, and are therefore relatively straightforward to apply. However, many of you may find that a combination of theoretical perspectives is most helpful for you to investigate your project. For example, maybe the group counseling program for which you are evaluating client outcomes draws from both motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral therapy. In order to understand the change happening in the client population, you would need to know each theory separately as well as how they work in tandem with one another. Because theoretical explanations and even the definitions of concepts are debated by scientists, it may be helpful to find a specific social scientist or group of scientists whose perspective on the topic you find matches with your understanding of the topic. Of course, it is also perfectly acceptable to develop your own theoretical framework, though you should be able to articulate how your framework fills a gap within the literature.

If you are adapting theoretical perspectives in your study, it is important to clarify the original authors’ definitions of each concept. Jabareen (2009) [44] offers that conceptual frameworks are not merely collections of concepts but, rather, constructs in which each concept plays an integral role. [45] A conceptual framework is a network of linked concepts that together provide a comprehensive understanding of a phenomenon. Each concept in a conceptual framework plays an ontological or epistemological role in the framework, and it is important to assess whether the concepts and relationships in your framework make sense together. As your framework takes shape, you will find yourself integrating and grouping together concepts, thinking about the most important or least important concepts, and how each concept is causally related to others.

Much like paradigm, theory plays a supporting role for the conceptualization of your research project. Recall the ice float from Figure 7.1. Theoretical explanations support the design and methods you use to answer your research question. In student projects that lack a theoretical framework, I often see the biases and errors in reasoning that we discussed in Chapter 1 that get in the way of good social science. That’s because theories mark which concepts are important, provide a framework for understanding them, and measure their interrelationships. If you are missing this foundation, you will operate on informal observation, messages from authority, and other forms of unsystematic and unscientific thinking we reviewed in Chapter 1 .

Theory-informed inquiry is incredibly helpful for identifying key concepts and how to measure them in your research project, but there is a risk in aligning research too closely with theory. The theory-ladenness of facts and observations produced by social science research means that we may be making our ideas real through research. This is a potential source of confirmation bias in social science. Moreover, as Tan (2016) [46] demonstrates, social science often proceeds by adopting as true the perspective of Western and Global North countries, and cross-cultural research is often when ethnocentric and biased ideas are most visible . In her example, a researcher from the West studying teacher-centric classrooms in China that rely partially on rote memorization may view them as less advanced than student-centered classrooms developed in a Western country simply because of Western philosophical assumptions about the importance of individualism and self-determination. Developing a clear theoretical framework is a way to guard against biased research, and it will establish a firm foundation on which you will develop the design and methods for your study.

Just as empirical evidence is important for conceptualizing a research project, so too are the key concepts and relationships identified by social work theory.
Using theory your theory textbook will provide you with a sense of the broad theoretical perspectives in social work that might be relevant to your project.
Try to find small-t theories that are more specific to your topic area and relevant to your working question.

In Chapter 2 , you developed a concept map for your proposal. Take a moment to revisit your concept map now as your theoretical framework is taking shape. Make any updates to the key concepts and relationships in your concept map. . If you need a refresher, we have embedded a short how-to video from the University of Guelph Library (CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0) that we also used in Chapter 2 .

7.5 Designing your project using theory and paradigm

Apply the assumptions of each paradigm to your project
Summarize what aspects of your project stem from positivist, interpretivist, or critical assumptions

In the previous sections, we reviewed the major paradigms and theories in social work research. In this section, we will provide an example of how to apply theory and paradigm in research. This process is depicted in Figure 7.2 below with some quick summary questions for each stage. Some questions in the figure below have example answers like designs (i.e., experimental, survey) and data analysis approaches (i.e., discourse analysis). These examples are arbitrary. There are a lot of options that are not listed. So, don’t feel like you have to memorize them or use them in your study.

A linear process moving from initial research questions (defining the purpose of research and its context), then moving to paradigmatic questions of ontology and epistemology which help us refine research questions; then moving to methodology, methods, and data analysis.

This diagram (taken from an archived Open University (UK) course entitled E89 - Educational Inquiry ) shows one way to visualize the research design process. While research is far from linear, in general, this is how research projects progress sequentially. Researchers begin with a working question, and through engaging with the literature, develop and refine those questions into research questions (a process we will finalize in Chapter 9 ). But in order to get to the part where you gather your sample, measure your participants, and analyze your data, you need to start with paradigm. Based on your work in section 7.3, you should have a sense of which paradigm or paradigms are best suited to answering your question. The approach taken will often reflect the nature of the research question; the kind of data it is possible to collect; and work previously done in the area under consideration. When evaluating paradigm and theory, it is important to look at what other authors have done previously and the framework used by studies that are similar to the one you are thinking of conducting.

Once you situate your project in a research paradigm, it becomes possible to start making concrete choices about methods. Depending on the project, this will involve choices about things like:

What is my final research question?
What are the key variables and concepts under investigation, and how will I measure them?
How do I find a representative sample of people who experience the topic I’m studying?
What design is most appropriate for my research question?
How will I collect and analyze data?
How do I determine whether my results describe real patterns in the world or are the result of bias or error?

The data collection phase can begin once these decisions are made. It can be very tempting to start collecting data as soon as possible in the research process as this gives a sense of progress. However, it is usually worth getting things exactly right before collecting data as an error found in your approach further down the line can be harder to correct or recalibrate around.

Designing a study using paradigm and theory: An example

Paradigm and theory have the potential to turn some people off since there is a lot of abstract terminology and thinking about real-world social work practice contexts. In this section, I’ll use an example from my own research, and I hope it will illustrate a few things. First, it will show that paradigms are really just philosophical statements about things you already understand and think about normally. It will also show that no project neatly sits in one paradigm and that a social work researcher should use whichever paradigm or combination of paradigms suit their question the best. Finally, I hope it is one example of how to be a pragmatist and strategically use the strengths of different theories and paradigms to answering a research question. We will pick up the discussion of mixed methods in the next chapter.

Thinking as an expert: Positivism

In my undergraduate research methods class, I used an open textbook much like this one and wanted to study whether it improved student learning. You can read a copy of the article we wrote on based on our study . We’ll learn more about the specifics of experiments and evaluation research in Chapter 13 , but you know enough to understand what evaluating an intervention might look like. My first thought was to conduct an experiment, which placed me firmly within the positivist or “expert” paradigm.

Experiments focus on isolating the relationship between cause and effect. For my study, this meant studying an open textbook (the cause, or intervention) and final grades (the effect, or outcome). Notice that my position as “expert” lets me assume many things in this process. First, it assumes that I can distill the many dimensions of student learning into one number—the final grade. Second, as the “expert,” I’ve determined what the intervention is: indeed, I created the book I was studying, and applied a theory from experts in the field that explains how and why it should impact student learning.

Theory is part of applying all paradigms, but I’ll discuss its impact within positivism first. Theories grounded in positivism help explain why one thing causes another. More specifically, these theories isolate a causal relationship between two (or more) concepts while holding constant the effects of other variables that might confound the relationship between the key variables. That is why experimental design is so common in positivist research. The researcher isolates the environment from anything that might impact or bias the cause and effect relationship they want to investigate.

But in order for one thing to lead to change in something else, there must be some logical, rational reason why it would do so. In open education, there are a few hypotheses (though no full-fledged theories) on why students might perform better using open textbooks. The most common is the access hypothesis , which states that students who cannot afford expensive textbooks or wouldn’t buy them anyway can access open textbooks because they are free, which will improve their grades. It’s important to note that I held this theory prior to starting the experiment, as in positivist research you spell out your hypotheses in advance and design an experiment to support or refute that hypothesis.

Notice that the hypothesis here applies not only to the people in my experiment, but to any student in higher education. Positivism seeks generalizable truth, or what is true for everyone. The results of my study should provide evidence that anyone who uses an open textbook would achieve similar outcomes. Of course, there were a number of limitations as it was difficult to tightly control the study. I could not randomly assign students or prevent them from sharing resources with one another, for example. So, while this study had many positivist elements, it was far from a perfect positivist study because I was forced to adapt to the pragmatic limitations of my research context (e.g., I cannot randomly assign students to classes) that made it difficult to establish an objective, generalizable truth.

Thinking like an empathizer: Interpretivism

One of the things that did not sit right with me about the study was the reliance on final grades to signify everything that was going on with students. I added another quantitative measure that measured research knowledge, but this was still too simplistic. I wanted to understand how students used the book and what they thought about it. I could create survey questions that ask about these things, but to get at the subjective truths here, I thought it best to use focus groups in which students would talk to one another with a researcher moderating the discussion and guiding it using predetermined questions. You will learn more about focus groups in Chapter 18 .

Researchers spoke with small groups of students during the last class of the semester. They prompted people to talk about aspects of the textbook they liked and didn’t like, compare it to textbooks from other classes, describe how they used it, and so forth. It was this focus on understanding and subjective experience that brought us into the interpretivist paradigm. Alongside other researchers, I created the focus group questions but encouraged researchers who moderated the focus groups to allow the conversation to flow organically.

We originally started out with the assumption, for which there is support in the literature, that students would be angry with the high-cost textbook that we used prior to the free one, and this cost shock might play a role in students’ negative attitudes about research. But unlike the hypotheses in positivism, these are merely a place to start and are open to revision throughout the research process. This is because the researchers are not the experts, the participants are! Just like your clients are the experts on their lives, so were the students in my study. Our job as researchers was to create a group in which they would reveal their informed thoughts about the issue, coming to consensus around a few key themes.

When we initially analyzed the focus groups, we uncovered themes that seemed to fit the data. But the overall picture was murky. How were themes related to each other? And how could we distill these themes and relationships into something meaningful? We went back to the data again. We could do this because there isn’t one truth, as in positivism, but multiple truths and multiple ways of interpreting the data. When we looked again, we focused on some of the effects of having a textbook customized to the course. It was that customization process that helped make the language more approachable, engaging, and relevant to social work practice.

Ultimately, our data revealed differences in how students perceived a free textbook versus a free textbook that is customized to the class. When we went to interpret this finding, the remix hypothesis of open textbook was helpful in understanding that relationship. It states that the more faculty incorporate editing and creating into the course, the better student learning will be. Our study helped flesh out that theory by discussing the customization process and how students made sense of a customized resource.

In this way, theoretical analysis operates differently in interpretivist research. While positivist research tests existing theories, interpretivist research creates theories based on the stories of research participants. However, it is difficult to say if this theory was totally emergent in the dataset or if my prior knowledge of the remix hypothesis influenced my thinking about the data. Interpretivist researchers are encouraged to put a box around their prior experiences and beliefs, acknowledging them, but trying to approach the data with fresh eyes. Interpretivists know that this is never perfectly possible, though, as we are always influenced by our previous experiences when interpreting data and conducting scientific research projects.

Thinking like an activist: Critical

Although adding focus groups helped ease my concern about reducing student learning down to just final grades by providing a more rich set of conversations to analyze. However, my role as researcher and “expert” was still an important part of the analysis. As someone who has been out of school for a while, and indeed has taught this course for years, I have lost touch with what it is like to be a student taking research methods for the first time. How could I accurately interpret or understand what students were saying? Perhaps I would overlook things that reflected poorly on my teaching or my book. I brought other faculty researchers on board to help me analyze the data, but this still didn’t feel like enough.

By luck, an undergraduate student approached me about wanting to work together on a research project. I asked her if she would like to collaborate on evaluating the textbook with me. Over the next year, she assisted me with conceptualizing the project, creating research questions, as well as conducting and analyzing the focus groups. Not only would she provide an “insider” perspective on coding the data, steeped in her lived experience as a student, but she would serve as a check on my power through the process.

Including people from the group you are measuring as part of your research team is a common component of critical research. Ultimately, critical theorists would find my study to be inadequate in many ways. I still developed the research question, created the intervention, and wrote up the results for publication, which privileges my voice and role as “expert.” Instead, critical theorists would emphasize the role of students (community members) in identifying research questions, choosing the best intervention to used, and so forth. But collaborating with students as part of a research team did address some of the power imbalances in the research process.

Critical research projects also aim to have an impact on the people and systems involved in research. No students or researchers had profound personal realizations as a result of my study, nor did it lessen the impact of oppressive structures in society. I can claim some small victory that my department switched to using my textbook after the study was complete (changing a system), though this was likely the result of factors other than the study (my advocacy for open textbooks).

Social work research is almost always designed to create change for people or systems. To that end, every social work project is at least somewhat critical. However, the additional steps of conducting research with people rather than on people reveal a depth to the critical paradigm. By bringing students on board the research team, study had student perspectives represented in conceptualization, data collection, and analysis. That said, there was much to critique about this study from a critical perspective. I retained a lot of the power in the research process, and students did not have the ability to determine the research question or purpose of the project. For example, students might likely have said that textbook costs and the quality of their research methods textbook were less important than student debt, racism, or other potential issues experienced by students in my class. Instead of a ground-up research process based in community engagement, my research included some important participation by students on project created and led by faculty.

Conceptualization is an iterative process

I hope this conversation was useful in applying paradigms to a research project. While my example discusses education research, the same would apply for social work research about social welfare programs, clinical interventions, or other topics. Paradigm and theory are covered at the beginning of the conceptualization of your project because these assumptions will structure the rest of your project. Each of the research steps that occur after this chapter (e.g., forming a question, choosing a design) rely upon philosophical and theoretical assumptions. As you continue conceptualizing your project over the next few weeks, you may find yourself shifting between paradigms. That is normal, as conceptualization is not a linear process. As you move through the next steps of conceptualizing and designing a project, you’ll find philosophies and theories that best match how you want to study your topic.

Viewing theoretical and empirical arguments through this lens is one of the true gifts of the social work approach to research. The multi-paradigmatic perspective is a hallmark of social work research and one that helps us contribute something unique on research teams and in practice.

Multi-paradigmatic research is a distinguishing hallmark of social work research. Understanding the limitations and strengths of each paradigm will help you justify your research approach and strategically choose elements from one or more paradigms to answer your question.
Paradigmatic assumptions help you understand the “blind spots” in your research project and how to adjust and address these areas. Keep in mind, it is not necessary to address all of your blind spots, as all projects have limitations.
Sketch out which paradigm applies best to your project. Second, building on your answer to the exercise in section 7.3, identify how the theory you chose and the paradigm in which you find yourself are consistent or are in conflict with one another. For example, if you are using systems theory in a positivist framework, you might talk about how they both rely on a deterministic approach to human behavior with a focus on the status-quo and social order.

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Here are links to two HBSE open textbooks, if you are unfamiliar with social work theories and would like more background. https://uark.pressbooks.pub/hbse1/ and https://uark.pressbooks.pub/humanbehaviorandthesocialenvironment2/ ↵
Box, G. E. P.. (1976). Science and statistics. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 71 (356), 791. ↵
Heineman-Pieper, J., Tyson, K., & Pieper, M. H. (2002). Doing good science without sacrificing good values: Why the heuristic paradigm is the best choice for social work. Families in Society , 83 (1), 15-28. ↵
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). The general causality orientations scale: Self-determination in personality. Journal of research in personality , 19 (2), 109-134. ↵
Abery, B., & Stancliffe, R. (1996). The ecology of self-determination. in Self-determination across the life span: Independence and choice for people with disabilities ( pp. 111-145.) Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company ↵
Payne, M. (2014). Modern social work theory . Oxford University Press. ↵
Hutchison, E. D. (2014). Dimensions of human behavior: Person and environment . Sage Publications. ↵
DeCoster, S., Estes, S. B., & Mueller, C. W. (1999). Routine activities and sexual harassment in the workplace. Work and Occupations, 26 , 21–49. ↵
Morgan, P. A. (1999). Risking relationships: Understanding the litigation choices of sexually harassed women. The Law and Society Review, 33 , 201–226. ↵
MacKinnon, C. (1979). Sexual harassment of working women: A case of sex discrimination . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ↵
An, S., Yoo, J., & Nackerud, L. G. (2015). Using game theory to understand screening for domestic violence under the TANF family violence option. Advances in Social Work , 16 (2), 338-357. ↵
Pellebon, D. A. (2007). An analysis of Afrocentricity as theory for social work practice. Advances in Social Work , 8 (1), 169-183. ↵
Jacobs, L. A., Kim, M. E., Whitfield, D. L., Gartner, R. E., Panichelli, M., Kattari, S. K., ... & Mountz, S. E. (2021). Defund the police: Moving towards an anti-carceral social work. Journal of Progressive Human Services , 32 (1), 37-62. ↵
Jabareen, Y. (2009). Building a conceptual framework: philosophy, definitions, and procedure. International journal of qualitative methods , 8 (4), 49-62. ↵
Jabareen distinguishes between theoretical and conceptual frameworks. We agree with this distinction, but feel that this additional detail is not needed here. ↵
Tan, C. (2016). Investigator bias and theory-ladenness in cross-cultural research: Insights from Wittgenstein. Current Issues in Comparative Education , 18 (1), 83-95. ↵

a single truth, observed without bias, that is universally applicable

one truth among many, bound within a social and cultural context

assumptions about what is real and true

assumptions about how we come to know what is real and true

quantitative methods examine numerical data to precisely describe and predict elements of the social world

qualitative methods interpret language and behavior to understand the world from the perspectives of other people

when someone is treated unfairly in their capacity to know something or describe their experience of the world

assumptions about the role of values in research

a set of common philosophical (ontological, epistemological, and axiological) assumptions that inform research

a set of concepts and relationships scientists use to explain the social world

a paradigm guided by the principles of objectivity, knowability, and deductive logic

a paradigm based on the idea that social context and interaction frame our realities

a paradigm in social science research focused on power, inequality, and social change

a research paradigm that suspends questions of philosophical ‘truth’ and focuses more on how different philosophies, theories, and methods can be used strategically to resolve a problem or question within the researcher's unique context

a network of linked concepts that together provide a comprehensive understanding of a phenomenon

Graduate research methods in social work by Matthew DeCarlo, Cory Cummings, Kate Agnelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Alan Bryman Social Research Methods, 4th Edition Oxford University Press (2012)

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Chapter 7: Credible Research Sources

Understanding research sources, strategies for gathering reliable information.

Once you have read the assignment, understood the instructions, and chosen your research topic, and devised a research question, you are finally ready to begin the in-depth research! As you read this section, you will learn ways to locate sources efficiently, so you have enough time to read the sources, take notes, and think about how to use the information. One main goal for this course is to teach you to work smarter and more efficiently.

Using Primary and Secondary Sources

Writers classify research resources in two categories: primary sources and secondary sources.

Primary sources are direct, firsthand sources of information or data. For example, if you were writing a paper about freedom of religion, the text of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms would be a primary source.

Other primary sources include the following:

Research articles
Literary texts
Historical documents such as diaries or letters
Autobiographies or other personal accounts

Secondary sources discuss, interpret, analyze, consolidate, or otherwise rework information from primary sources. They also tell you what research has already been conducted on your topic and what areas/conclusions have been deemed important by that scholarly community. In researching a paper about freedom of religion, you might read articles about legal cases that involved freedom of religion, or editorials expressing commentary on freedom of religion. These would be considered secondary sources because they are one step removed from the primary source of information.

The following are examples of secondary sources:

Magazine articles
Biographical books
Literary and scientific reviews
Television documentaries

Your topic and purpose determine whether you must cite both primary and secondary sources in your paper. Ask yourself which sources are most likely to provide the information that will answer your research questions. If you are writing a research paper about reality television shows, you will need to use some reality shows as a primary source, but secondary sources, such as a reviewer’s critique, are also important. If you are writing about the health effects of nicotine, you will probably want to read the published results of scientific studies, but secondary sources, such as magazine articles discussing the outcome of a recent study, may also be helpful.

Video source: https://youtu.be/CPQ95B95bWE

Once you have thought about what kinds of sources are most likely to help you answer your research questions, you may begin your search for print and electronic resources. The challenge is to conduct your search efficiently. Writers use strategies to help them find the sources that are most relevant and reliable while steering clear of sources that will not be useful.

Reading Popular and Scholarly Periodicals

When you search for periodicals, be sure to distinguish among different types. Mass market publications, such as newspapers and popular magazines, differ from scholarly publications in their accessibility, audience, and purpose.

Newspapers and magazines are written for a broader audience than scholarly journals. Their content is usually quite accessible and easy to read. Trade magazines that target readers within a particular industry may presume the reader has background knowledge, but these publications are still reader friendly for a broader audience. Their purpose is to inform and, often, to entertain or persuade readers as well.

Scholarly or academic journals are written for a much smaller and more expert audience. The creators of these publications assume that most of their readers are already familiar with the main topic of the journal. The target audience is also highly educated. Informing is the primary purpose of a scholarly journal. While a journal article may advance an agenda or advocate a position, the content will still be presented in an objective style and formal tone (which is why you have been asked to find an academic journal article). Entertaining readers with breezy comments and splashy graphics is not a priority with this type of source.

Because of these differences, scholarly journals are more challenging to read. That does not mean you should avoid them. On the contrary, they can provide in-depth information that is unavailable elsewhere. Because knowledgeable professionals carefully review the content before publication, scholarly journals are far more reliable than much of the information available in popular media. Seek out academic journals along with other resources. Just be prepared to spend a little more time processing the information.

Video source: https://youtu.be/tN8S4CbzGXU

Using online Databases

Library catalogues can help you locate book length sources, as well as some types of nonprint holdings, such as CDs, DVDs, and audiobooks. But, to locate shorter sources, such as magazine and journal articles, you will need to use an online periodical database . These tools index the articles that appear in newspapers, magazines, and journals. Like catalogues, they provide publication information about an article and often allow users to access a summary or even the full text of the article.

Commonly Used Databases

Finding and Using Electronic Resources

With the expansion of technology and media over the past few decades, a wealth of information is available to you in electronic format. Some types of resources, such as television documentaries, may only be available electronically. Other resources—for instance, many newspapers and magazines—may be available in both print and electronic form. The following are some of the electronic sources you might consult:

Online databases
Popular web search engines
Websites maintained by businesses, universities, nonprofit organizations, or government agencies
Newspapers, magazines, and journals published on the web
Industry blogs
Radio and television programs and other audio and video recordings
Online discussion groups

The techniques you use to locate print resources can also help you find electronic resources efficiently. Libraries usually include CD-ROMs, audiobooks, and audio and video recordings among their holdings. You can locate these materials in the catalogue using a keyword search. The same Boolean operators used to refine database searches can help you filter your results in popular search engines.

Using Internet Search Engines Efficiently

When faced with the challenge of writing a research paper, some students rely on popular search engines as their first source of information. Typing a keyword or phrase into a search engine instantly pulls up links to dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of related websites—what could be easier? Unfortunately, despite its apparent convenience, this research strategy has the following drawbacks:

Results do not always appear in order of reliability. The first few hits that appear in search results may include sites with unreliable content, such as online encyclopedias that can be edited by any user. Because websites are created by third parties, the search engine cannot tell you which sites have accurate information.

Results may be too numerous for you to use. The amount of information available on the web is far greater than the amount of information housed within a particular library or database. Realistically, if your web search pulls up thousands of hits, you will not be able to visit every site—and the most useful sites may be buried deep within your search results.

Search engines are not connected to the results of the search. Search engines find websites that people visit often and list the results in order of popularity. The search engine, then, is not connected to any of the results. When you cite a source found through a search engine, you do not need to cite the search engine. Only cite the source.

A general web search can provide a helpful overview of a topic and may pull up genuinely useful resources. To get the most out of a search engine like Google Scholar , however, you will need to use strategies to make your search more efficient.

To find resources efficiently, first identify the major concepts and terms you will use to conduct your search—that is, your keywords . Use multiple keywords and Boolean operators to limit your results. These will help you find sources using any of the following methods:

Using the library’s online catalogue
Using periodicals indexes and databases
Consulting a reference librarian

Video source: https://youtu.be/EevV36TGIE8

Depending on the specific search engine you use, the following options may be available:

Limit results to websites that have been updated within a particular time frame
Limit results by language or country
Limit results to scholarly works available online
Limit results by file type
Limit results to a particular domain type, such as .edu (school and university sites) or .gov (government sites). This is a quick way to filter out commercial sites, which can often lead to more objective results.
Use the “bookmarks” or “favourites” feature of your web browser to save and organize sites that look promising.

Finding Print Resources

Print resources include a vast array of documents and publications. Regardless of your topic, you will consult some print resources as part of your research. (You will use electronic sources as well, but it is not wise to limit yourself to electronic sources only because some potentially useful sources may be available only in print form.)

Yes, folks, physical books do still hold some merit!

Types of Print Resources

Some of these resources are also widely available in electronic format. In addition to the resources noted in the table, library holdings may include primary texts such as historical documents, letters, and diaries.

Writing at Work

Businesses, government organizations, and nonprofit organizations produce published materials that range from brief advertisements and brochures to lengthy, detailed reports. In many cases, producing these publications requires research. A corporation’s annual report may include research about economic or industry trends. A charitable organization may use information from research in materials sent to potential donors.

Regardless of the industry you work in, you may be asked to assist in developing materials for publication. Often, incorporating research in these documents can make them more effective in informing or persuading readers.

Evaluating Research Resources

As you gather sources, you will need to examine them with a critical eye. Smart researchers continually ask themselves two questions: “Is this source relevant to my purpose?” and “Is this source reliable?” The first question will help you avoid wasting valuable time reading sources that stray too far from your specific topic and research questions. The second question will help you find accurate, trustworthy sources.

Determining Whether a Source Is Relevant

At this point in your research process, you may have identified dozens of potential sources. It is easy for writers to get so caught up in checking out books and printing out articles that they forget to ask themselves how they will use these resources in their research. Now is a good time to get a little ruthless. Reading and taking notes takes time and energy, so you will want to focus on the most relevant sources.

To weed through your stack of books and articles, skim their contents. Read quickly with your research questions and subtopics in mind. If a book or article is not especially relevant, put it aside. You can always come back to it later if you need to.

Tips for Skimming Books and Articles

Some sources are better than others: let’s talk wikipedia!

You probably know by now that if you cite Wikipedia as an authoritative source, your professors will be unimpressed. Why is it that even the most informative Wikipedia articles are still often considered illegitimate? Because the information is subject to change by anyone (though that has changed recently as Wikipedia works on its quality control).

However, Wikipedia is a great place to begin your research for two reasons:

It provides a great overview of your topic, including keywords
The reference page of the Wikipedia entry is a great place to begin your research

So, what are good sources to use? The table below summarizes types of secondary sources in four tiers. All sources have their legitimate uses, but the top-tier ones are preferable for citation in academic research papers as secondary sources.

Tier 1: Peer-reviewed academic publications

These are sources from the mainstream academic literature: books and scholarly articles. Academic books generally fall into three categories: (1) textbooks written with students in mind, (2) monographs which give an extended report on a large research project, and (3) edited volumes in which each chapter is authored by different people. Scholarly articles appear in academic journals, which are published multiple times a year in order to share the latest research findings with scholars in the field. They’re usually sponsored by some academic society. To get published, these articles and books had to earn favorable anonymous evaluations by qualified scholars in a process called Peer Review . Who are the experts writing, reviewing, and editing these scholarly publications? Your professors. This process is described in more detail below. Learning how to read and use these sources is a fundamental part of being a college student.

Video source: https://youtu.be/rOCQZ7QnoN0

Tier 2: Reports, articles and books from credible non-academic sources

Some events and trends are too recent to appear in Tier 1 sources. Also, Tier 1 sources tend to be highly specific, and sometimes you need a more general perspective on a topic. Thus, Tier 2 sources can provide quality information that is more accessible to non-academics. There are three main categories. First, official reports from government agencies or major international institutions like the World Bank or the United Nations ; these institutions generally have research departments staffed with qualified experts who seek to provide rigorous, even-handed information to decision-makers. Second, feature articles from major newspapers and magazines like the New York Times , Wall Street Journal , London Times , or The Economist are based on original reporting by experienced journalists (not press releases) and are typically 1500+ words in length. Third, there are some great books from non-academic presses that cite their sources; they’re often written by journalists. All three of these sources are generally well researched descriptions of an event or state of the world, undertaken by credentialed experts who generally seek to be even-handed. It is still up to you to judge their credibility. Your instructors and campus librarians can advise you on which sources in this category have the most credibility.

Tier 3. Short pieces from periodicals or credible websites

A step below the well-developed reports and feature articles that make up Tier 2 are the short tidbits that one finds in newspapers and magazines or credible websites. How short is a short news article? Usually, they’re just a couple paragraphs or less, and they’re often reporting on just one thing: an event, an interesting research finding, or a policy change. They don’t take extensive research and analysis to write, and many just summarize a press release written and distributed by an organization or business. They may describe things like corporate mergers, newly discovered diet-health links, or important school-funding legislation. You may want to cite Tier 3 sources in your paper if they provide an important factoid or two that isn’t provided by a higher-tier piece, but if the Tier 3 article describes a particular study or academic expert, your best bet is to find the journal article or book it is reporting on and use that Tier 1 source instead. If the article mentions which journal the study was published in, you can go right to that journal through your library website. Sometimes you can find the original journal article by putting the scholar’s name and some keywords into Google Scholar.

What counts as a credible website in this tier? You may need some guidance from instructors or librarians, but you can learn a lot by examining the person or organization providing the information (look for an “About” link). For example, if the organization is clearly agenda-driven or not up-front about its aims and/or funding sources, then it definitely isn’t something you want to cite as a neutral authority. Also look for signs of expertise. A tidbit about a medical research finding written by someone with a science background carries more weight than the same topic written by a policy analyst. These sources are sometimes uncertain, which is all the more reason to follow the trail to a Tier 1 or Tier 2 source whenever possible.

Tier 4. Agenda-driven or pieces from unknown sources

This tier is essentially everything else, including Wikipedia. [1] These types of sources—especially Wikipedia—can be hugely helpful in identifying interesting topics, positions within a debate, keywords to search on, and, sometimes, higher-tier sources on the topic. They often play a critically important role in the early part of the research process, but they generally aren’t (and shouldn’t be) cited in the final paper. Throwing some keywords into Google and seeing what you get is a fine way to get started, but don’t stop there. Start a list of the people, organizations, sources, and keywords that seem most relevant to your topic. For example, suppose you’ve been assigned a research paper about the impact of linen production and trade on the ancient world. A quick Google search reveals that (1) linen comes from the flax plant, (2) the scientific name for flax is Linum usitatissimum , (3) Egypt dominated linen production at the height of its empire, and (4) Alex J. Warden published a book about ancient linen trade in 1867. Similarly, you found some useful search terms to try instead of “ancient world” (antiquity, Egyptian empire, ancient Egypt, ancient Mediterranean) and some generalizations for linen (fabric, textiles, or weaving). Now you’ve got a lot to work with as you tap into the library catalog and academic article databases.

For examples of different styles of writing, see “Module 4: Supplementary Readings” in this textbook

Determining Whether a Source Is Reliable

All information sources are not created equal. Sources can vary greatly in terms of how carefully they are researched, written, edited, and reviewed for accuracy. Common sense will help you identify obviously questionable sources, such as tabloids that feature tales of alien abductions, or personal websites with glaring typos. Sometimes, however, a source’s reliability—or lack of it—is not so obvious.

To evaluate your research sources, you will use critical thinking skills consciously and deliberately. You will consider criteria such as the type of source, its intended purpose and audience, the author’s qualifications, the publication’s reputation, any indications of bias or hidden agendas, how current the source is, and the overall quality of the writing, thinking, and design.

Evaluating Types of Sources

The different types of sources you will consult are written for distinct purposes and with different audiences in mind. This accounts for other differences, such as the following:

How thoroughly the writers cover a given topic
How carefully the writers research and document facts
How editors review the work
What biases or agendas affect the content.

A journal article written for an academic audience for the purpose of expanding scholarship in a given field will take an approach quite different from a magazine feature written to inform a general audience. Textbooks, hard news articles, and websites approach a subject from different angles as well. To some extent, the type of source provides clues about its overall depth and reliability. The following table ranks popular sources of information:

Evaluating Credibility and Reputability

Even when you are using a type of source that is generally reliable, you will still need to evaluate the author’s credibility and the publication itself on an individual basis. To examine the author’s credibility —that is, how much you can believe of what the author has to say—examine his or her credentials. What career experience or academic study shows that the author has the expertise to write about this topic?

Video source: https://youtu.be/tdcmjPR7Ntw

Keep in mind that expertise in one field is no guarantee of expertise in another, unrelated area. For instance, an author may have an advanced degree in physiology, but this credential is not a valid qualification for writing about psychology. Check credentials carefully.

Just as important as the author’s credibility is the publication’s overall reputability. Reputability refers to a source’s standing and reputation as a respectable, reliable source of information. An established and well-known newspaper, such as the Globe and Mail or the New York Times, is more reputable than a college newspaper put out by comparatively inexperienced students. A website that is maintained by a well-known, respected organization and is regularly updated is more reputable than one created by an unknown author or group.

If you are using articles from scholarly journals, you can check databases that keep count of how many times each article has been cited in other articles. This can give you a rough indication of the article’s quality or, at the very least, of its influence and reputation among other scholars.

Using Current Sources

Depending on the topic, sources may become outdated relatively soon after publication, or they may remain useful for years. The age of a source you can use will depend on your research topic and approach. For example, were you to be investigating current medical developments for Diabetes, be sure to seek out sources that are current, or up to date. If you were examining the history of Diabetes medical developments, you would be looking for sources as far back as you could go.

Timeliness is a complicated issue for researchers, particularly with the internet. For instance, online social networking sites have evolved rapidly over the past few years. An article published in 2002 about this topic will not provide current information. On the other hand, a research paper on elementary education practices might refer to studies published decades ago by influential child psychologists.

When using websites for research, check to see when the site was last updated. Many sites publish this information on the homepage, and some, such as news sites, are updated daily or weekly. Many nonfunctioning links are a sign that a website is not regularly updated. Do not be afraid to ask your instructor for suggestions if you find that many of your most relevant sources are not especially reliable—or that the most reliable sources are not relevant.

Evaluating Overall Quality by Asking Questions

When you evaluate a source, you will consider the criteria previously discussed as well as your overall impressions of its quality. Read carefully, and notice how well the author presents and supports his or her statements. Stay actively engaged—do not simply accept an author’s words as truth.

Source Evaluation Questions:

Is the type of source appropriate for my purpose? Is it a high-quality source or one that needs to be looked at more critically?
Can I establish that the author is credible and the publication is reputable?
Does the author support ideas with specific facts and details that are carefully documented? Is the source of the author’s information clear? (When you use secondary sources, look for sources that are not too removed from primary research.)
Does the source include any factual errors or instances of faulty logic?
Does the author leave out any information that I would expect to see in a discussion of this topic?
Do the author’s conclusions logically follow from the evidence that is presented? Can I see how the author got from one point to another?
Is the writing clear and organized, and is it free from errors, clichés, and empty buzzwords? Is the tone objective, balanced, and reasonable? (Be on the lookout for extreme, emotionally charged language.)
Are there any obvious biases or agendas? Based on what I know about the author, are there likely to be any hidden agendas?
Are graphics informative, useful, and easy to understand? Are websites organized, easy to navigate, and free of clutter like flashing ads and unnecessary sound effects?
Is the source contradicted by information found in other sources? (If so, it is possible that your sources are presenting similar information but taking different perspectives, which requires you to think carefully about which sources you find more convincing and why. Be suspicious, however, of any source that presents facts that you cannot confirm elsewhere.)

The critical thinking skills you use to evaluate research sources as a student are equally valuable when you conduct research on the job. If you follow certain periodicals or websites, you have probably identified publications that consistently provide reliable information. Reading blogs and online discussion groups is a great way to identify new trends and hot topics in a particular field, but these sources should not be used for substantial research.

Self-Practice Exercise

Use a search engine to conduct a web search on your topic. Refer to the tips provided earlier to help you streamline your search. Evaluate your search results critically based on the criteria you have learned. Identify and bookmark one or more websites that are reliable, reputable, and likely to be useful in your research.

Managing Sources

As you determine which sources you will rely on most, it is important to establish a system for keeping track of your sources and taking notes. There are several ways to go about it, and no one system is necessarily superior. What matters is that you keep materials in order; record bibliographical information you will need later; and take detailed, organized notes.

Bibliographic information is all the referencing information you need from all sources you consider using for your paper—think of this as your working references page. Any time you look at a source, you should make note of all the referencing information—you may later decide to change direction in your paper or simply choose not to use that source as you develop your paper, but if you do decide to use that source, you will have all the details you need when compiling your references page.

Keeping Track of Your Sources

Think ahead to a moment a few weeks from now when you will have written your final research paper and are almost ready to submit it for a grade. There is just one task left: writing your list of sources.

As you begin typing your list, you realize you need to include the publication information for a book you cited frequently. Unfortunately, you already returned it to the library several days ago. You do not remember the URLs for some of the websites you used or the dates you accessed them—information that also must be included in your reference page. With a sinking feeling, you realize that finding this information and preparing your references will require hours of work.

This stressful scenario can be avoided. Taking time to organize source information now will ensure that you are not scrambling to find it at the last minute. Throughout your research, record bibliographical information for each source as soon as you begin using it. You may use pen-and-paper methods, such as a notebook or note cards, or maintain an electronic list. (If you prefer the latter option, many office software packages include separate programs for recording bibliographic information, or you can try popular programs like Mendeley or Zotero )

Use these details to develop a working bibliography —a preliminary list of sources that you will later use to develop the references section of your paper. You may wish to record information using the formatting system of the American Psychological Association (APA), which will save a step later on.

Details for Commonly Used Source Types

Origins and anatomy of a journal article

Most of the Tier 1 sources available are academic articles, also called scholarly articles, scholarly papers, journal articles, academic papers, or peer-reviewed articles. They all mean the same thing: a paper published in an academic periodical (think: magazine for nerds) after being scrutinized anonymously and judged to be sound by other experts in the subfield. Academic papers are essentially reports that scholars write to their peers—present and future—about what they’ve done in their research, what they’ve found, and why they think it’s important. The origin of academic articles explains both their basic structure and the high esteem they have in the eyes of your professors.

Thus, in a lot of fields they often have a structure reminiscent of the lab reports you may have written for science classes:

Abstract : A one-paragraph summary of the article: its purpose, methods, findings, and significance.
Introduction : An overview of the key question or problem that the paper addresses, why it is important, and the key conclusion(s) (i.e., thesis or theses) of the paper.
Literature review : A synthesis of all the relevant prior research (the so-called “academic literature” on the subject) that explains why the paper makes an original and important contribution to the body of knowledge.
Data and methods : An explanation of what data or information the author(s) used and what they did with it.
Results : A full explanation of the key findings of the study.
Conclusion/discussion : Puts the key findings or insights from the paper into their broader context; explains why they matter.

But beware! Not all papers are so “sciencey.” For example, a historical or literary analysis doesn’t necessarily have a “data and methods” section; however, they do explain and justify the research question, describe how the authors’ own points relate to those made in other relevant articles and books, develop the key insights yielded by the analysis, and conclude by explaining their significance. Some academic papers are review articles, in which the “data” are published papers and the “findings” are key insights, enduring lines of debate, and/or remaining unanswered questions.

Credible scholarly journals use a peer-review process to decide which articles merit publication. However, academia is seeing a shift in how research is being disseminated. Self-publishing on platforms such as Academia.edu or even LinkedIn is becoming increasingly more popular, but comes with a risk: the articles are not likely to have been peer-reviewed. There are also open-access journals that do not charge fees to institutions or researchers to read articles.

reading academic journal articles

Reading an academic journal article is different from most reading strategies that you may use in other contexts. Rarely do researchers read an academic journal in a linear way, from start to finish. Check out the following video for tips on how to read academic journal articles efficiently and effectively:

Video source: https://youtu.be/3MzBumiwje0

Research papers, amongst others, are the most common papers a college student will ever write, and as difficult as it may sound, it is not impossible to complete. Research papers are my favorite kind of papers because of sourcing, paraphrasing, and quoting. Naturally as you would in other papers, your own paper should come from yourself, but when you are proving a point about a specific area of your topic, it is always ok to have a credible source explain further. In college, sources are very important for most, if not all papers you will have, and citing those sources is important as well. After you are able to familiarize yourself with citations, it will come natural like it has for many students.

Consulting a Reference Librarian

Sifting through library stacks and database search results to find the information you need can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. If you are not sure how you should begin your search, or if it is yielding too many or too few results, you are not alone. Many students find this process challenging, although it does get easier with experience. One way to learn better search strategies is to consult a reference librarian.

Reference librarians are intimately familiar with the systems libraries use to organize and classify information. They can help you locate a particular book in the library stacks, steer you toward useful reference works, and provide tips on how to use databases and other electronic research tools. Take the time to see what resources you can find on your own, but if you encounter difficulties, ask for help.

You can find the Sheridan College Library information here .

Visit your library’s website or consult with a reference librarian to determine what periodicals indexes or databases would be useful for your research. Depending on your topic, you may rely on a general news index, a specialized index for a particular subject area, or both. Search the catalogue for your topic and related keywords. Print out or bookmark your search results.

Identify at least one to two relevant periodicals, indexes, or databases.

Conduct a keyword search to find potentially relevant articles on your topic.

Save your search results. If the index you are using provides article summaries, read these to determine how useful the articles are likely to be.

Identify at least three to five articles to review more closely. If the full article is available online, set aside time to read it. If not, plan to visit our library within the next few days to locate the articles you need.

PRO TIP: One way to refine your keyword search is to use Boolean operators. These allow you to combine keywords, find variations on a word, and otherwise expand or limit your results. Here are some of the ways you can use Boolean operators:

Combine keywords with and or + to limit results to citations that include both keywords—for example, diet + nutrition.
Combine keywords with or to find synonyms. For example, prison or jail . The phrase “Or is more” may help you remember that using this will show you more results.
Combine keywords with not or – to search for the first word without the second. This can help you eliminate irrelevant results based on words that are similar to your search term. For example, searching for stress fractures not geological locates materials on fractures of bones but excludes materials on fractures of stones . Use this one cautiously because it may exclude useful sources.
Enclose a phrase in quotation marks to search for an exact phrase, such as “morbid obesity,” “ use of force ,” or “ law enforcement .”
Use parentheses to direct the order of operations in a search string. For example, since Type II diabetes is also known as adult onset diabetes, you could search (Type II or adult onset or Type 2) and diabetes to limit your search results to articles on this form of the disease.
Use a wildcard symbol such as * , #, ?, or $ after a word to search for variations on a term. For instance, you might type gang* to search for information on gang, gangs, and gangland. The specific symbol used varies with different databases.

Discover Sheridan’s Library Services

Sheridan’s Library collects academic material related to all programs and courses offered at Sheridan. Along with the traditional library materials in print (books, journals, etc), they increasingly collect online material so that you can easily access our content at any time from anywhere!

For a more comprehensive overview of the Sheridan Library, check out their First Year Quick Start Guide .

Where do I start my Search?

Use Summon to find content from the many different databases and collections that we subscribe to, as well as items on library shelves. A great place to start your search!

Once you become familiar with library resources, you’ll quickly get to know which databases are best for your specific information need. We list all of our databases and sites through the Databases A-Z list.

View library-created Research Guides to find all types of resources specific to your research topics.

Databases & Streaming Media

We have over 200 databases on a wide range of subjects and disciplines. Use the A-Z Database List to access databases and streaming media sites, which includes content from journal articles, newspapers, images, videos, tutorials, and more.

We currently have more ebooks than books on the shelves! We get ebooks from more than one company. Some can be downloaded, but most are available without downloading. All you need is your Sheridan Credentials to access them! Find ebooks through Summon .

Textbooks & Course Reserves

Textbooks are available for 3hr loan periods at each campus library. Our textbooks are intended to be used for quick reference only. We recommend that students purchase their own copies. Search for your textbook titles in Summon . Course reserves are typically non-textbook items that a professor has recommended for reading. Loan periods are generally 2hr loans, but may vary. Course reserves are kept behind the service desk at each campus library. Ask staff at the library service desk .

English Language Learning (ELL) Resources

We have many resources available for all levels of ESL students to improve reading, writing, listening and speaking skills. See our English Language Learning Guide for more details.

Games & Equipment

You can now borrow board games, video games and PlayStation game consoles from the library! Board games are available at Davis campus library. Video games and PlayStation consoles are available at Trafalgar campus library. Visit us in person to check them out, and see the Borrowing Policy below for more details.

Study Spaces

All Sheridan campus libraries and learning commons provide a range of environments for different needs.

Quiet study areas
Group study areas where you can collaborate and chat
Private group study rooms

Book a Group Study Room online.

Tutoring Services

At the Tutoring Centre, Learning Assistants (LAs) offer tutoring in specific subject areas (listed below) at no additional cost to you as a Sheridan student. As senior co-op students recruited from Sheridan, University of Waterloo, Ryerson, and University of Guelph, the LAs in the Tutoring Centre are knowledgeable and well qualified to support you in your studies.

How it Works:

Book up to 2 hours per week, per subject.

Book an Appointment – first-time users must register using a Sheridan email address
Drop-in Hours – Varies from term to term
Not able to come visit us during our open hours? Email us with your questions and/or comments at [email protected]
Architecture – Covers the use of architecture-related software (e.g., AutoCAD, Sketchup), as well as technical math, drafting, and other related topics. Plus, your LA can provide explanations of OBC standards and help you better understand course material.
Chemistry – Covers fundamental issues related to Chemistry, Organic and Biochemistry from a health perspective (Pharmacy, Nursing, Nutrition and Medicine).
Citation & References – Covers how to build and correct your citations and references for your writing assignments (APA, MLA and other styles). Bring your references, sources, and citation questions! By appointment only.
Computer Programming – Covers object-oriented programming (Java 1 and Java 2) and other computer programming-related questions.
English/Writing – Covers writing practice, presentation skills, basic computing, study and test-taking skills, citing sources, and pronunciation. In addition, tutors can review a portion of your assignment for structure and grammar and offer constructive feedback on content and style. NOTE: Your tutor cannot proofread an entire assignment for you, but they can help you improve your proof-reading skills.
Math & Business Math – Covers general Math, most Business Math topics (e.g., Accounting, Finance, Statistics, etc.), as well as many technical Math and related topics. Your LA can provide explanations of math concepts, and patiently help you problem solve your way to finding solutions and understanding your subject better.
Wikipedia is a conundrum. There are a lot of excellent articles on there, and I, like many other professors, embrace the open-access values that embody things like Wikipedia and this very textbook. It’s not that Wikipedia is crap; it’s just that there are much more solid alternatives. ↵

Writing for Academic and Professional Contexts: An Introduction Copyright © 2023 by Sheridan College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Chapter 7: Research

This chapter is adapted from Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking , CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 .

What is research?

What and how is research useful.

When conducting research, you get to ask questions and actually find answers. For example, if you have ever wondered what the best job interview strategies are, research will tell you. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to be a NASCAR driver, an astronaut, a marine biologist, or a university professor, once again, research is one of the easiest ways to find answers to questions you’re interested in knowing. Second, research can open a world you never knew existed. We often find ideas we had never considered and learn facts we never knew when we conduct research. Lastly, research can lead you to new ideas and activities. Maybe you want to learn how to compose music, draw, learn a foreign language, or write a screenplay; research is always the best first step toward learning anything.

We define research as scholarly investigation into a topic to discover, revise, or report facts, theories, and applications. Notice that there are three distinct parts of research: discovering, revising, and reporting. The reporting function is primarily what you will be doing in this course. This is the phase when you accumulate information about a topic and report that information to others.

What is Primary and Secondary Research?

There are two main research information sources. Watch Emily Craig’s video, Market Research: the Difference Between Primary and Secondary Sources , to get a better understanding of the two.

Market Research: the Difference Between Primary and Secondary Sources , by Emily Craig , Standard YouTube License. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bPDNt9463g

1. Primary Research Sources: Primary research is reported by the person conducting the research and is considered an active form of research because the researcher is actually conducting the research for the purpose of creating new knowledge. The researcher discovers or revises facts, theories, and applications. For the purposes of your speeches, you may use two basic primary research categories: surveys and interviews. This includes firsthand research where you personally complete an interview or survey and share the results in your speech.

Conducting surveys: A survey is a collection of facts, figures, or opinions gathered from participants and used to indicate how everyone within a target group may respond. Maybe you’re going to be speaking before an education board about its plans to build a new library, so you create a survey and distribute it to all your neighbors seeking their feedback on the project. During your speech, you could then discuss your survey and the results you found.

Conducting interviews: An interview is a conversation in which the interviewer asks a series of questions aimed at learning facts, figures, or opinions from one or more respondents. As with a survey, an interviewer generally has a list of prepared questions to ask; but unlike a survey, an interview allows for follow-up questions that can aid in understanding why a respondent gave a certain answer.

2. Secondary Research Sources: Secondary research is carried out to discover or revise facts, theories, and applications and is reported by someone not involved in conducting the actual research. Most of what we consider research falls into the secondary research category. These sources are what you will mostly use for your speeches:

Biographical resources
Books of quotations
Digital collections
Encyclopedias; Wikipedia, but only used properly
Government publications
Images, to an extent
Periodicals
Poetry collections
Social news sites
Website reference works

How do I analyze research?

Nonacademic and academic sources.

Nonacademic sources include information sources that are sometimes also called popular press information sources; their primary purpose is to be read by the general public. Most nonacademic information sources are written at a sixth- to eighth-grade reading level, so they are very accessible. Although the information contained in these sources is often quite limited, the advantage of using nonacademic sources is that they appeal to a broad, general audience.

Nonacademic examples and resources:

Books Most college and university libraries offer both the physical stacks where the books are located and the electronic databases that contain ebooks. The two largest ebook databases are ebrary and NetLibrary . Although these library collections are generally cost-prohibitive for an individual, more and more academic institutions are subscribing to them. Some libraries are also making portions of their collections available online for free, for example, Harvard University’s Digital Collections , New York Public Library’s E-book Collection , The British Library’s Online Gallery , and the US Library of Congress . With the influx of computer technology, libraries have started to create vast stores of digitized content from around the world. These online libraries contain full-text documents, free of charge to everyone. Some online libraries we recommend are Project Gutenberg , Google Books , Open Library , and Get Free eBooks . This is a short list of just a handful of the libraries that are now offering free electronic content.

General-interest periodicals These are magazines and newsletters published on a fairly systematic basis. Some popular magazines in this category include The New Yorker , People , Reader’s Digest , Parade , Smithsonian , and The Saturday Evening Post . These magazines are considered general interest because most people in the United States find them interesting and topical.

Special-interest periodicals These are magazines and newsletters that are published for a narrower audience. In a 2005 article, Business Wire noted that in the United States there are over ten thousand different magazines published annually, but only two thousand of which have significant circulation1. More widely known special-interest periodicals are Sports Illustrated , Bloomberg’s Business Week , Gentleman’s Quarterly , Vogue , Popular Science , and House and Garden . But for every major magazine, there are a great many other lesser-known magazines, such as American Coin Op Magazine , Varmint Hunter , Shark Diver Magazine , Pet Product News International , and Water Garden News , to name just a few.

Newspapers – According to newspapers.com, the top ten newspapers in the United States are USA Today , the Wall Street Journal , the New York Times , the Los Angeles Times , the Washington Post , the New York Daily News , the Chicago Tribune , the New York Post , Long Island Newsday , and the Houston Chronicle . Most colleges and universities subscribe to a number of these newspapers in paper form or electronic access.

Blogs – Although anyone can create a blog, there are many reputable blog sites that are run by professional journalists. As such, blogs can be a great information source. However, as with all Internet information, you must wade through much junk to find useful, accurate information. According to Technorati.com, some of the most commonly read blogs in the world in 2011 are as follows: The Huffington Post , Gizmodo , Mashable! , and The Daily Beast.

Encyclopedias – These are information sources that provide short, very general information about a topic. Encyclopedias are available in both print and electronic formats, and their content ranges from eclectic and general, such as the Encyclopædia Britannica , to the very specific, such as the Encyclopedia of 20th Century Architecture or Encyclopedia of Afterlife Beliefs and Phenomena . One of the most popular online encyclopedic sources is Wikipedia . Like other encyclopedias, Wikipedia can be useful for finding basic information, such as the baseball teams that Catfish Hunter played for, but will not give you the depth of information you need for a speech. Also, keep in mind that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, unlike the general and specialized encyclopedias available through your library, and therefore, often contains content errors and biased information

Websites – These are the last major nonacademic information sources. In the twenty-first century, we live in a world where there is much information readily available at our fingertips. Unfortunately, you can spend hours and hours searching for information and never quite find what you’re looking for if you don’t devise an Internet search strategy. First, select a good search engine to help you find appropriate information. This list contains links to common search engines and the general information found there

Search Engines

US Government Open Data
HON Med Hunt
US National Library of Medicine
Bizrate Comparison
Google Shopping
Population Reference Bureau
US Census Bureau
ARTCYCLOPEDIA: The Fine Art Search Engine
The Library of Congress
Ziprecruiter
Diversity Jobs

Academic and Scholarly Sources These include texts that are read by dozens of academics who provide feedback. If you include academic research in your writing process, it will be time consuming, but it provides you with an extra level of confidence in the information’s relevance and accuracy. The main difference between academic or scholarly information and the information you get from the popular press is oversight. In the nonacademic world, the primary information gatekeeper is the editor, who may or may not be a content expert. Academia has established a way to perform a series of checks to ensure that the information is accurate and follows agreed-upon academic standards. In this section, we will discuss scholarly books and articles, computerized databases, and scholarly web information.

Academic examples and resources:

Scholarly Books – According to the Text and Academic Authors Association , there are two types of scholarly books: textbooks and academic books. Textbooks are books that are written about a segment of content within an academic field and are written for undergraduate or graduate student audiences. These books tend to be very specifically focused. Academic books are books that are primarily written for other academics for informational and research purposes. Generally speaking, when instructors ask you to find scholarly books, they are referring to academic books. Thankfully, there are hundreds of thousands of academic books published on almost every topic you can imagine. In the communication, field, there are a handful of major publishers who publish academic books, for example, SAGE , Routledge , Jossey-Bass , Pfeiffer , the American Psychological Association , and the National Communication Association , among others.

Scholarly Articles – Because most academic writing comes in the form of scholarly articles or journal articles, these are the best places to find academic research on a given topic. Every academic subfield has its own journals, so you should never have a problem finding the best and most recent topic research. However, scholarly articles are written for a scholarly audience, so reading scholarly articles takes more time than if you were to read a popular press-magazine article. It’s also helpful to realize that there may be parts of the article you simply do not have the background knowledge to understand, and there is nothing wrong with that. Many research studies are conducted by quantitative researchers who rely on statistics to examine phenomena. Unless you have training in understanding the statistics, it is difficult to interpret the statistical information that appears in these articles. Instead, focus on the beginning part of the article where the authors discuss previous secondary research, and then focus at the article’s end, where the authors explain what was found in their primary research.

Computerized Databases – Finding academic research is easier today than it ever has been because of large computer databases. Here’s how these databases work: a database company signs contracts with publishers to gain the right to store the publishers’ content electronically. The database companies then create thematic databases containing publications related to general knowledge areas, such as business, communication, psychology, medicine, etc. The database companies then sell database subscriptions to libraries. Use our SLCC library database. How to Use SLCC Library

The Web – In addition to the subscription databases, there are also numerous great sources for scholarly information on the web. As mentioned earlier, however, finding scholarly information on the web poses a problem because anyone can post information on the web. Fortunately, there are many great websites that filter this information for us.

Scholarly Information on the Web

Tips for finding authoritative and credible sources and evidence.

Create a Research Log – George believes it’s important to keep a “step-by-step account of the process of identifying, obtaining, and evaluating sources for a specific project…” (George, 2008). In essence, keeping a log of your research is very helpful because it can help you keep track of what you’ve read thus far.
Start with Background Information – It’s not unusual for students to try to jump right into the meat of a topic, only to find out that there is a lot of technical language they just don’t understand. For this reason, start your research with sources written for the general public. Generally, these lower-level sources are great for topic background information and are helpful when trying to learn a subject’s basic vocabulary.
Search your Library – Try to search as many different databases as possible. Look for relevant books, ebooks, newspaper articles, magazine articles, journal articles, and media files. Modern college and university libraries have a ton of sources, and one search may not reveal everything you are looking for on the first pass. Furthermore, don’t forget to think about topic synonyms. The more topic synonyms you can generate, the better you’ll be at finding information.
Learn to Skim – Start by reading the introductory paragraphs. Generally, the first few paragraphs will give you a good idea about the overall topic. If you’re reading a research article, start by reading the abstract. If the first few paragraphs or abstract don’t sound like they’re applicable, there’s a good chance the source won’t be useful for you. Second, look for highlighted, italicized, or bulleted information. Generally, authors use highlighting, italics, and bullets to separate information to make it jump out for readers. Third, look for tables, charts, graphs, and figures. All these forms are separated from the text to make the information more easily understandable for a reader, so discovering if the content is relevant is a way to see if it helps you. Fourth, look at headings and subheadings. Headings and subheadings show you how an author has grouped information into meaningful segments.
Read Bibliographies and Reference Pages – After you’ve finished reading useful sources, see who those sources cited on their bibliographies or reference pages. We call this method backtracking. Often, the sources cited by others can lead us to even better sources than the ones we found initially.
Ask for Help – Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Librarians are your friends. They won’t do your work for you, but they are more than willing to help if you ask.

Black and white cartoon with two men speaking and the caption "Keep in mind there are only two kinds of facts... those that support my position... and inconclusive."

How to Analyze Sources

To analyze your sources, follow these guidelines:

Consider the Source

The source is the author and or publisher who provides the information you are reading.
Is it clear who the source is? If not, be suspicious of that website or article.
Is the source qualified? Does the author have the qualifications to speak on the subject? If there is no author or there is no information about the author, be suspicious. Use profnet to search for credible source information.
Are there references attached to the website or article you are looking at? Are those references verifiable and credible? If you look at a source’s bibliography or reference page, and it has only a couple of citations, then you can assume that either the information was not properly cited, or it was largely made up by someone.
Academic or not? Because of the enhanced scrutiny academic sources go through, we argue that you can generally rely more on the information contained in academic sources than nonacademic sources.

Consider Source Bias

Take a look at this article .
This article gives a list of websites that might not pass some of our consider-your-source bias. Take a look and see which of these websites are biased.
Even though a source may have credible information, if it clearly has a vested interest in something, look elsewhere.

Determine Document Currency

How long has it been since the website has been updated? When was the article written? If the answer is 2012 or earlier, find something more recent since information may have changed in the last five years.
Ensuring your evidence is recent is important to your speaker credibility.
Not all information that is old however, is irrelevant. Sometimes, we must look at history to understand the present or to predict the future. Some facts and information have not changed much or at all over time.

Use Fact-Checking Sites

Pop Culture and Urban Myths: Snopes
Politcal Claims: PolitiFact , Factcheck , The Fact Checker
Medical Claims: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Health Central
News Events: Check reputable news organizations such as the New York Times , BBC News , or CNN

How do I cite my sources in a speech?

Citation Style

Citation styles provide particular formats for in-text citations and bibliographies to use in your research paper. Choose the citation style based on the discipline in which you are writing. Usually, your professor will indicate the citation style that he or she would like you to use (guides.temple.edu). Some common citation styles:

American Psychological Association, APA Style: frequently used in the social sciences.
Chicago Manual of Style, Chicago Style: Notes and Bibliography format is often used in the humanities; Author-Date format is often used in the social sciences and sciences.
Modern Language Association, MLA Style: widely used in the humanities (guides.temple.edu).

The APA and the MLA are two commonly used style guides in academia today. Generally speaking, scholars in the various social science fields, such as psychology, human communication, and business are more likely to use APA style, and scholars in the various humanities fields such as English, philosophy, and rhetoric are more likely to use MLA style, in addition to Chicago Manual for publishing. These styles are quite different from each other, so learning them takes time.

In this course, you will use APA style in your written work and your speech citations. First, let’s discuss how to cite research references inside your written work and at the end for your bibliography and works-cited page.

How to cite research references inside your outline

When citing research references inside your outline, they are called in-text or parenthetical citations. Look at EasyBib’s website, which has a list of different examples to help you see how it is done in APA format.

As you probably noticed, in-text or parenthetical citations are very similar to the way you might cite your research references inside an English or research paper. Since the outlines for your speeches are full sentences, use the same in-text citation. Look at SLCC Libguides for another example of in-text citations.

How to cite research reference pages at the end of your outline

The reference page, also known as a bibliography or works-cited page, is the last page on your outline. How you title this page depends on if you are using APA, MLA, or Chicago Style, etc. In APA format, which is what we will use in this class, use the title, “References.” Visit the Purdue Owl website and navigate to the bottom of the page to see an example. The Purdue Online Writing Lab is also a great site to help you with APA format for your speech research.

There are several places you can go online and in Microsoft Word that will cite sources for you in APA. These are called citation managers, which are software programs used to download, organize, and output your citations. You can output thousands of different citation styles, including APA, Chicago, and MLA using citation managers (guides.temple.edu). All you have to do is input the information! When you use the SLCC library to do research, they provide automatic APA citation for you!

Citation Machine Scribbr The Owl at Purdue

Citing Sources Orally in a Speech

Now, we will discuss how to use oral citations in your speech and provide examples. This will be extremely important to your class grade, as you will be graded on the way you cite your sources orally in your speech and how many citations you mention. Keep in mind that written references are more complete and more formal than oral references, which means you want your oral citations in your speech to flow and fit in with the rest of your speech’s content.

Either immediately before or after you give source information during your speech, identify these key oral citation standards or elements:

Name the website, author, person, magazine, etc.
State your source’s credentials—ethos. This includes the person, website, etc. and explain in your speech why and how this is an authoritative topic source. Explain why you are using this source compared to other possible sources.
Give the article, book, or video title, etc.
Give the source’s date, if it is necessary and relevant, which it usually is.

Here are some examples that correspond to the numbers above:

“According to Dr. Jim Pritchard, a practicing architect in Salt Lake City, architecture is not a dying discipline but is actually thriving ….” (2)

“The 2016 edition of Crompton’s Encyclopedia explains that … “(3, 4)

“I read in my English textbook, Effective Writing , that writing skills are one of the number-one skills required to have a successful career …. “(3)

Example from your textbook in Appendix A: “It killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide and 675,000 Americans, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Website flu.gov.” (1, 3)

According to Melanie Smithfield in an article titled “Do It Right, or Do It Now,” published in the June 18, 2009, issue of Time Magazine… (1, 2, 3, 4)

According to Roland Smith, a legendary civil rights activist and former chair of the Civil Rights Defense League, in his 2001 book The Path of Peace… (1, 2, 3, 4)

Here is an example of an informative speech given during a competition. Listen carefully for the sources, and watch how the speaker seamlessly gives his audience evidence.

Robert Cannon NFA Info Finals – Informative Speaking , by Cannonball of Death, Standard YouTube License . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SogNbDakslQ

Key things to remember:

Is it important that you explain who the author of a text is? Or, why is the source website relevant to your speech’s topic? Why mention the research study date or a source-book title? By including this explanation in your speech you help the audience see the ethos or credibility in your sources, and therefore, your credibility as the speaker.
Mentioning your sources boosts your credibility. If you are not a credible speaker, people won’t take you seriously; they won’t listen to you at all; or they could even make you look bad in public, embarrass you, or ruin your reputation, etc.
Proper oral speech citation also helps you avoid oral plagiarism, which is a serious issue and could lead to failing the class or being kicked out of school, etc. Oral plagiarism has the same consequences as written plagiarism.

What does it mean to use sources ethically?

Avoid plagiarism.

If the idea isn’t yours, cite the information source during your speech. Listing the citation on a bibliography or reference page is only half of the correct citation. You must provide correct citations for all your sources within your speech as well. In a very helpful book called Avoiding Plagiarism: A Student Guide to Writing Your Own Work , Menager-Beeley and Paulos provide a list of twelve strategies for avoiding plagiarism (Menager-Beeley & Paulos, 2009):

Do your own work, and use your own words. One of the goals of a public speaking class is to develop skills that you’ll use in the world outside academia. When you are in the workplace and the real world, you’ll be expected to think for yourself, so start learning this skill now.
Allow yourself enough time to research the assignment. Not having adequate time to prepare is no excuse for plagiarism.
Keep careful track of your sources. A common mistake people make is that they forget where information came from when they start creating the speech itself. When you log your sources, you’re less likely to inadvertently lose sources and to cite them incorrectly.
Take careful notes. It doesn’t matter what method you choose for taking research notes, but whatever you do, be systematic to avoid plagiarizing.
Assemble your thoughts, and make it clear who is speaking. When creating your speech, make sure that you clearly differentiate your voice in the speech from your quoted author’s voice. The easiest way to do this is to create a direct quotation or a paraphrase. Remember, audience members cannot see where the quotation marks are located within your speech text, so clearly articulate with words and vocal tone when you are using someone else’s ideas within your speech.
If you use an idea, a quotation, paraphrase, or summary, then credit the source. We can’t reiterate it enough—if it is not your idea, tell your audience where the information came from. Giving credit is especially important when your speech includes a statistic, an original theory, or a fact that is not common knowledge.
Learn how to cite sources correctly, both in the body of your paper and in your reference or works-cited page.
Quote accurately and sparingly. A public speech should be based on factual information and references, but it shouldn’t be a string of direct quotations strung together. Experts recommend that no more than 10 percent of a paper or speech be direct quotations (Menager-Beeley & Paulos, 2009). When selecting direct quotations, always ask yourself if the material could be paraphrased in a manner that would make it clearer for your audience. If the author wrote a sentence in a way that is just perfect, and you don’t want to tamper with it, then by all means directly quote the sentence. But if you’re just quoting because it’s easier than putting the ideas into your own words, this is not a legitimate reason for including direct quotations.
Paraphrase carefully. Modifying an author’s words is not simply a matter of replacing some of the words with synonyms. Instead, as Howard and Taggart explain in Research Matters , “paraphrasing force[s] you to understand your sources and to capture their meaning accurately in original words and sentences” (Howard & Taggart, 2010). Incorrect paraphrasing is one of the most common ways that students inadvertently plagiarize. First and foremost, paraphrasing is putting the author’s argument, intent, or ideas into your own words.
Do not patchwrite or patchspeak. Menager-Beeley and Paulos define patchwriting as “mixing several references together and arranging paraphrases and quotations to constitute much of the paper. In essence, the student has assembled others’ work with a bit of embroidery here and there but with little original thinking or expression” (Menager-Beeley & Paulos, 2009). Just as students can patchwrite, they can also patchspeak. In patchspeaking, students rely completely on weaving together quotations and paraphrases in a manner that is devoid of the student’s original thinking.
Do not auto-summarize. Some students have learned that most word processing features have an auto-summary function. The auto-summary function will summarize a ten-page document into a short paragraph.
Do not rework another student’s speech or buy paper-mill papers or speech-mill speeches. In today’s Internet environment, there are numerous student-speech storehouses on the Internet. Whether you use a speech that is freely available or pay money for a speech, you are plagiarizing. This is also true if your speech’s main substance was copied from a web page. Any time you try to present someone else’s ideas as your own during a speech, you are plagiarizing.

Use Sources Ethically In a speech

Ways to use sources ethically in a speech:

Avoid plagiarism , as we already discussed.
Avoid Academic Fraud – While there are numerous websites from which you can download free speeches for your class, this is tantamount to fraud. If you didn’t do the research and write your own speech, then you are fraudulently trying to pass off someone else’s work as your own. In addition to being unethical, many institutions have student codes that forbid such activity. Penalties for academic fraud can be as severe as suspension or expulsion from your institution.
Don’t Mislead Your Audience – If you know a source is clearly biased, and you don’t spell this out for your audience, then you are purposefully trying to mislead or manipulate your audience. Instead, if you believe the information to be biased, tell your audience and allow them to decide whether to accept or disregard the information.
Give Author Credentials – Always provide the author’s credentials. In a world where anyone can say anything and have it published on the Internet or even in a book, we have to be skeptical of the information we see and hear. For this reason, it’s very important to provide your audience with background information about your cited authors’ credentials.
Use Primary Research Ethically – Lastly, if you are using primary research within your speech, you need to use it ethically as well. For example, if you tell your survey participants that the research is anonymous or confidential, then make sure that you maintain their anonymity or confidentiality when you present those results. Furthermore, be respectful if someone says something is off the record during an interview. Always maintain participants’ privacy and confidentiality during primary research unless you have their express permission to reveal their names or other identifying information.

How do I establish ethos?

Establishing ethos—one of the three rhetorical appeals—is achieved by including authoritative evidence or research inside of your speech. You establish ethos as well through your credibility and ethics as a speaker.

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you prepare to establish ethos for any speech:

Credibility

Does the audience see you as topic-credible? What have you done or said to ensure this?
What makes you credible? Do you explain your credibility to the audience in the speech?
Can the audience trust you? What reason have you given them to trust you?

Authoritative Sources

Do you cite your authoritative sources out loud in your speech?
Are your sources actually authoritative for this topic?
What makes your sources authoritative? Do you explain that to your audience?
Does your dress, clothing, and appearance match the topic, occasion, and audience for your speech? How might your audience perceive your appearance from your perspective?

You must be able to answer all of these questions with a yes and a good explanation. The audience should clearly hear and see your ethos in your speech.

University of Minnesota. (2016). Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking . University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. https://open.lib.umn.edu/publicspeaking/ . CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Media References

Cannonball of Death. (2011, January 3). Robert Cannon NFA Info Finals – Informative Speaking [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SogNbDakslQ

Craig, E. (2019, September 20). Market Research: the Difference Between Primary and Secondary Sources [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bPDNt9463g

Dombrowski, Q. (2010, October 28). Bibliography [Image]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/5124103273/

Fuller, A. (2022, May 5). Textbook Cartoon [Image]. Center for eLearning, Salt Lake Community College.

Geralt. (2021, May 20). Arrows Direction Way [Image]. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/illustrations/arrows-direction-way-sketch-false-6268063/

Not of or relating to formal study.

A long written or printed literary composition.

Public Speaking Copyright © 2022 by Sarah Billington and Shirene McKay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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What's the best state for you », trump's former lawyer giuliani stumbles in bid to appeal defamation ruling.

Trump's Former Lawyer Giuliani Stumbles in Bid to Appeal Defamation Ruling

FILE PHOTO: Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani departs the U.S. District Courthouse after he was ordered to pay $148 million in his defamation case in Washington, U.S., December 15, 2023. REUTERS/Bonnie Cash/File Photo

By Dietrich Knauth

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. bankruptcy judge on Tuesday rejected Rudy Giuliani's attempt to appeal a $148 million defamation judgment won by former Georgia election workers, saying Donald Trump's former lawyer should focus on his own stalled bankruptcy case.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane agreed with creditors, including defamed election workers Wandrea "Shaye" Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who complained that Giuliani had made no progress on selling his assets or resolving his debts.

Giuliani must move on from the "appeal or bust" approach that he has taken since filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December, the judge said during a court hearing in White Plains, New York.

"I see it as an impediment to progress in the bankruptcy," Lane said of the proposed appeal.

Giuliani needs Lane's permission to appeal the defamation judgment because his Chapter 11 filing automatically stopped all litigation against him, including the case he lost.

Lane had previously allowed Giuliani to seek a new trial or challenge the size of the judgment awarded to Moss and Freeman, whom Giuliani had falsely accused of fraud after former Republican President Trump's defeat in the 2020 election. But after a federal judge rejected Giuliani's request in April, Lane ruled that the appeal should go no further.

Giuliani had argued that appealing the defamation judgment could potentially free up resources to pay his other creditors, including other people who have sued him.

Rachel Strickland, an attorney representing Moss and Freeman, told Lane that Giuliani should not be allowed to appeal while also using his bankruptcy to avoid paying the defamation judgment and stop other lawsuits.

"Chapter 11 isn't just a place to hide out spend all your money and wait," Strickland said.

Giuliani's WABC radio show was pulled from the airwaves on Friday due to his repeated false statements about the 2020 election, and Moss and Freeman have asked Lane to enter a court order stopping Giuliani from making more defamatory statements.

"Mr. Giuliani is going in the wrong direction in terms of being able to actually work and make money," Strickland said. "He is deliberately flouting his employer's restrictions and getting fired."

Giuliani responded to the cancellation of his radio show by saying he never promised WABC that he would not talk about the 2020 election on his show.

Giuliani's attorney Gary Fischoff told Lane that he understood that a federal judge had already ruled that Giuliani's statements were defamatory.

"But does your client see it that way?" Lane asked.

Fischoff paused before answering: "I hope so.

Lane scheduled a Thursday court hearing to discuss whether he, or another judge, should rule on Giuliani's continued false statements about the 2020 election.

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth, editing by Deepa Babington)

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Doing Research in the Real World

Chapter 7. Ethics

Introduction

Being an Ethical Researcher

Part 1: Ethical Issues throughout the Course of the Study

Data Collection

Part 2: Ethical Scenarios

Scenario 1: The Glass Ceiling

Scenario 2: #BlackLivesMatter

Scenario 3: The Unhoused

Scenario 4: Studying Upside Down

Scenario 5: Political Deception

Scenario 6: What Do Your Friends Say About You?

Further Readings

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Research Design Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches

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Craft of Research (CoR) Study/Discussion Guide

Chapter 7 – Primer

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7. Theory and paradigm

7.1. What are your assumptions?

Embrace philosophy

Theoretical & philosophical fluency

Building your ice float

Ontology: Assumptions about what is real & true

Objective vs. subjective ontologies

Epistemology: Assumptions about how we know things

Objective vs. subjective epistemologies

Putting it all together

Key Takeaways

7.2 Ethical and critical considerations

Whose truth does science establish?

Self-determination and free will

Radical change

Axiology: Assumptions about values

Linking axiology, epistemology, and ontology

Philosophical assumptions, as a whole

7.3 Social work research paradigms

How do scientific ideas change over time?

Paradigm vs. theory

Positivism: Researcher as “expert”

Is positivism right for your project?

Interpretivism: Researcher as “empathizer”

Is interpretivism right for your project?

Critical paradigm: Researcher as “activist”

Is the critical paradigm right for your project?

Pragmatism: Researcher as “strategist”

Adopt a multi-paradigmatic perspective

7.4 Developing your theoretical framework

Theories: Big and small

Competing theoretical explanations

Applying big-T theories to your topic

Developing your own theoretical framework

7.5 Designing your project using theory and paradigm

Designing a study using paradigm and theory: An example

Thinking as an expert: Positivism

Thinking like an empathizer: Interpretivism

Thinking like an activist: Critical

Conceptualization is an iterative process

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Alan Bryman Social Research Methods, 4th Edition Oxford University Press (2012)

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