Research 101 | How to Choose Your Research Approach: Differences Between 4 Paradigms

A lil' Q&A responding to a question about the difference between the four paradigms in research/evaluation (post-positivist, constructivist, pragmatic, & transformative) and how to choose your approach.

the run down

First things first, I just want to briefly touch on the word paradigm, because one of the things I'm committed to is not using a lot of jargon. And I would consider a paradigm to be jargony. So, what is a paradigm? A paradigm is basically an example or a pattern or a model; a framework. A paradigm can be used to explain a broader concept or to make sense of a lot of different things in a more simplified way.

For instance, think about four paradigms of research (the topic of this Q&A). Lots of people have done research. It can be tricky to talk about the hundreds of 1000s of research studies that have ever happened altogether. However, if you go through those different research studies, you start to find some trends, some themes — some things that they have in common in terms of how they make choices, and how they approach the research. If you do the work of analyzing and digging into all that, you can develop something like a paradigm, which is a simple, streamlined way to make sense of larger buckets of work. In this case, researchers have come up with four paradigms for research and evaluation.

Let's dig into them and I will give you my simplified take on them and talk a little bit about how to decide which one or more than one you want to use in your work.

Post positivist is a paradigm that's mainly focused on your choice of methods. Methods is how you're collecting information (data), how you're analyzing the information (data), and post-positivists use a quantitative approach. So, they're looking at numbers. This is because they're striving to find a truth that is independent of the observer. So they're looking for a truth that is true for anyone no matter what. Doesn’t matter if it’s me seeing it or you're seeing it, there is just an objective truth.

Constructivists on the other hand, view the researcher as the instrument. That means that you, as the researcher, are shaping the methods, the data, and the findings. You have this relationship with them. It matters who you are, it matters what your perspectives are. And constructivism is about identifying these different perspectives. It’s almost like the idea that there could be multiple truths and my truth could look different than your truth. Constructive work is largely through qualitative methods. So through voice, text, stories, and not numbers.

Pragmatic paradigm is about how data is used, and it's about the data being useful to stakeholders. Stakeholders can be considered the people who you're collecting data from, the people who are going to use the data, the people who the data and the decisions that come from the data can impact. Those are all stakeholders. For this paradigm, what matters is that the information is actually useful. And in many cases, this can be mixed. Use some quantitative and qualitative, some numbers, some stories. You combine different methods and use them in a way that's that they complement each other.

Lastly, we have the transformative paradigm. And the transformative paradigm is something that I know I've been hearing a lot more about recently, which I think is exciting. It is centered around social justice and recognizing that research and evaluation are about power and that the power dynamics at play in research and evaluation are important to consider; it’s important to design your study or evaluation in a way that is ethical and considers equity and diverse perspectives. And in this case, also in a way that allows you to transform the status quo — Transformative is about transforming— so like change the world do things differently, change how things are done. It also often uses mixed methods.

So as you can kind of tell from these brief little descriptions, these paradigms are not mutually exclusive. If something's mutually exclusive, that means that if you're one thing, you can't be the other. If you go through these paradigms, you could have research and evaluation that reflects all four of them, right? The post positivist gets a little trickier to get in there just because it's so quantitative, but I still think there are aspects of that belief system there that you could really you could do a study that involves all four of these at the same time. They're not mutually exclusive. I think it’s important to remember that you don't have just to choose one.

So in thinking about how to choose your approach to research, I want to share something that I learned in graduate school and that I still think about, and that is that you should let your questions drive the methods, which means when you're deciding a paradigm to use or picking the tools you're going to us or deciding how to analyze data. The question that you're seeking an answer to the question that you're investigating, that is what to drive your choice. You don't start out and say, you know, I'm going to do constructivist research. And I'm going to, you know, do a case study and I'm going to do this or I'm going to do post positivist research and I'm going to do a hierarchical linear modeling.

You wouldn't do that because it's like, well, like how do you know that? Those are the right approaches? Given the question you have, like, Don't predetermine how you're going to answer the question. Pick the question first, and then think through.

What is the best way to answer this question? What's the best way to collect information? What's the best way to analyze information so that I can have an answer to this question that I trust and that is accurate and thorough? That's the order you want to go in. So really start with the question that you have. And I also think it's important to layer in there, the context right because sometimes if you're studying and you're looking at at you know, we're gonna collect data from 10,000 People can be really hard to do qualitative data analysis, you might not have the resources in terms of time or, or money or know how to do all that. So there are other factors like contextual factors that shape how you answer that question. But at the end of the day, the best way you know how to answer that question, that's what should be driving the paradigm that you draw from the methods that you're choosing the approach that you're taking.

The other thing I want to mention is, in my opinion, all all research and evaluation needs to be two things. It needs to be pragmatic, like, it needs to be practical, it needs to be useful. Why are we doing research? If the information can't be used? I don't know. I'm, I don't know. I think it's important that you are are doing research and evaluation that is useful and meaningful to the people involved in that work the people impacted by that work. So to me, pragmatic is always very top of mind. Similarly transformative, this idea that research, research is power. I really believe that research and evaluation has power and it can dictate who's voices heard and who gets money and it's, it's something that we have to recognize about research and when we are building research and evaluation studies, to intentionally build in that aspect of being inclusive of different viewpoints and experiences and creating space for people to be heard, and really pushing back on systems that are racist and sexist and outdated. Like we have an opportunity to do that with research. So don't don't not recognize that don't let that opportunity so to waste. I think that there is this moral aspect of doing research like tomorrow, like what is right for people in the world, in my opinion being practically helpful. And also being human centered, inclusive, and your design are critical, right? So that's two of them right there two paradigms that you should always be thinking of. And then when it comes to the constructivist and the post positivist yet, all the studies that I work on are mixed methods. To some extent there's there's debate over what can really be considered mixed methods because it's not supposed to just be checking off the box of having numbers and stories, you know, quantitative and qualitative, but I really don't advocate of bringing that mixed methods ones to your work if it answers your question. I think a lot of times the qualitative can add more context and nuanced understanding. And it's really important to have that. And so when I think about how all my work to include both constructivist and post positivist what I think about is this. I, I, as I said earlier, I think the researcher is the instrument. I think that's really important to acknowledge the role that you and your beliefs and your experiences play in the work that you're doing. So that's constructivist right there, right? Recognizing that and seeking different perspectives in your work. I think that's really important. It's kind of makes it seem like okay, so it's never a post positivist right? It's never but I think the essence whereby you're looking for truth, like the spirit of that I don't think is at odds with everything else. I'm saying like I want to look for truth to I just recognize that we should be looking at it from different perspectives. So I think that the sentiment there is something you can incorporate I think the quantitative methods can be very quick and useful and can sometimes there are times when they can be more objective, for instance, to do a study of how tall people are, I would much rather measure people that ask them to self report it right. So there there is a place there to again, depends on what your question is, but no matter what your question is, I hope that you're striving to be inclusive and practical as you design your research and evaluation. So Elvis was helpful. this is really fun to do. I don't get to dig into the philosophy aspect of this very often. so I really appreciate you asking the question, and hope, this, this gave you something to think about.

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