Philosophies guiding research Types of research Research
projects usually fit into one of four main categories of
research: type 1 – positivist/postpositivist; type 2 - social
constructivist; type 3 - pragmatic and type 4 - participatory
(which will be discussed in more detail in the following
sections). This is because researchers have different world
views or belief systems which guide them in their research,
influencing the decisions they make about how to conduct their
studies, what counts as valid knowledge, what is the right way
to obtain that knowledge, how it should be analysed (e.g. using
quantitative or qualitative-based methods) and what their own
role in the process is. The various approaches to research are
sometimes called research paradigms. The whole issue of
paradigms can be traced back to Kuhn’s 1970 influential book
“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. For quite some time,
the two main paradigms were the positivist/postpositivist
paradigm (linked to quantitative research) and the cons