Back to: Paper 1 Unit 2: Research Aptitude (शोध अभिवृत्ति)

Lesson 1.5

Post-Positivism Approach of Research (उत्तर-प्रत्यक्षवाद शोध उपागम)

• As the prefix “post” suggest, it is a position that arose historically after positivism and replaced it.
• Post-positivism comes forward as a reaction of social science researchers to the limitations of positivism as a paradigm.
• They discovered that positivism cannot fulfil the requirements for social sciences’ research as it bases itself on observable and empirical analytic facts.
• As a reaction to its orthodox nature towards quantitative empirical analytic based research, the researchers of social sciences and education came with the idea of mixed paradigm combining positivism and interpretivism and making a new paradigm named post-positivism.
• Post-positivism balances both positivist and interpretivist approaches.
• Positivism focuses on researching issues in the context of involving experiences of the majority and announcing the results of what the majority says is acceptable.
• Whereas post-positivism, along with quantitative analysis, includes the perspectives of historical, comparative, philosophical, and phenomenological analysis.
• Although post-positivist research scientifically strives to explore the phenomena, it believes, unlike positivist research, that the absolute truth is nowhere to be found.
• Post-positivism does not aim to disapprove the scientific/quantitative elements of positivism in the research, rather it emphasizes a proper understanding of the directions and perspectives of any research study from multi-dimensions and multi-methods.
• Positivist believed that the goal of science was to uncover the truth.
• Post-positivist recognizes that all observation is fallible and has error and that all theory is revisable.
• The post-positivist emphasizes the importance of multiple measures and observations, each of which may possess different types of error, and the need to use triangulation across these multiple errorful sources to try to get a better idea on what’s happening in reality.
• Post-positivistic paradigm promotes the triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods that explores the diversity of facts researchable through various kinds of investigations but respecting and valuing all findings as the essential components for the development of knowledge.
• This hybrid design research aims at investigating objective and subjective or internal phenomena.
• Positivists believed that objectivity was a characteristic that resided in the individual scientist. Scientists are responsible for putting aside their biases and beliefs and seeing the world as it ‘really’ is.
• Post-positivists reject the idea that any individual can see the world perfectly as it really is.
• For post-positivist research truth is probabilistic and provisional.
• It suggests the turning of the empirical data of a positivist result into knowledge through interpretative collaboration with other viewpoints.
• It also believe that assumptions can only be discovered and explained properly when their data is investigated through contradictory frameworks.