Underlying Theoretical and Philosophical Assumptions   (pt1)   1000w     

 The opposing epistemological and ontological positions mentioned above are the background upon which the different philosophical perspectives on research or research paradigms emerge. Theoretically, there are at least ten philosophical perspectives arising from the combination of the different ontological and epistemological positions (Blaikie, 2007). Interestingly, there are no right or wrong philosophical perspective, the appropriateness of the position taken by researchers depends on the relevant of the underlining philosophical assumptions to an individual research question (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000).. The author found two philosophical perspectives / paradigm ‘positivism’ and ‘post-positivism’ to be relevant to the research question for this study and these will be discussed below. The decision to consider only these two paradigms was based on a careful review of their ontological and epistemological positions, which appeared to be relevant to providing the descriptive answer required by the research question for this study. Other philosophical perspective / paradigm were not discussed here because they were of little or no relevance to answering the research questions but could be found elsewhere (See Bryman, 2008).

2.2.1 Positivism

One principal feature of positivist philosophies of science is the believe that advancement in knowledge is the product of empirical research; through the gradual accumulation of facts about the world to produce the generalisations known as scientific laws (Hughes and Sharrock, 1990). This is the basis for the epistemological position of positivism, which advocates the use of the methods of n