Ontology, Epistemology, Methodology, methods and sources

Ontology:

What we believe constitutes social reality. This helps us to understand how different scholarly traditions embedded in fundamentally different cultural contexts can have different views of the world and different assumptions supporting their approaches to social enquiry. Grix (2004) in his book “The Foundations of Research” argue that Ontology is prior to Epistemology.

Ontological problems mainly concern with the nature of social entities: Whether or not social entities can be and should be considered objective (and therefore external) to social actors; or whether social entities could be constructed based on the actions and perceptions of social actors (Bryman & Bell, 2007).

Epistemology:

Epistemology is concerned with the theory of knowledge, especially in regard to its methods, validation and ‘the possible ways of gaining knowledge of social reality’. It is about ‘How what we assumed to exist can be known’

Epistemology focuses on the knowledge-gathering process and is concerned with developing new models or theories that are better than competing models and theories.

Epistomological issues concern the questions of what is (or should be) regarded as acceptable knowledge in a discipline: Whether or not the social world can be and should be studied according to the same principles, procedures, and ethos as the natural science (Bryman & Bell, 2007)


Therefore, each step of these consider different viewpoints:

• Epistomological considerations: Positivism vs Interpretivism. Since Nafeth did mentioned about this, I have no way of improving his explanations

• Ontological considerations: Objectivism vs Constructionism

Objectivism implies an ontological stance that social phenomena confront us as external facts that are beyond our reach or influences.

Constructionism advocates that social phenomena and their meanings are continually being not only built up based on the social interactions but also revised constantly.


Following are two examples of ‘contrasting’ epistemological positions:

• Positivism: this is an epistemological position that advocates the application of the methods of the natural sciences to the study of social reality and beyond

• Interpretivism: an epistemological position that believes that a strategy is required that respects the differences between people and the objects of natural sciences and therefore requires the social scientist to grasp the subjective meaning of social action

Choosing one of these epistemological views will lead you to employ a different methodology than you would if you choose the other.

If Ontology is about what we may know, then Epistemology is about how we come to know what we know.

Our research questions are normally shaped based on our ontological and epistemological positions. This can be thought of as what is explained in the following diagram:

Based on the steps listed above, we can conclude that choosing our methods is based on the research questions posed and the sources of data collected.

On the other hand, some researchers believe that research can start at any of the stages that are listed in the diagram above. For example, a researcher might choose a favourite method and then work reversely through his methodology, epistemology and ontology. This may work, but with extreme care to make sure that all of these components are logically compatible with each other.

Some researchers prefer ‘question-based’ research (using the steps listed in the above figure) while others might opt for ‘method-led research’. You could argue that choosing a research method before having a research question is not logical...