4 Research Paradigms & Theories

The terms paradigm and theory are often used interchangeably in social science, although social scientists do not always agree whether these are identical or distinct concepts. In this text, we will make a clear distinction between the two ideas. Regarding them as analytically distinct will provide a useful framework for understanding the connections between research methods and social scientific ways of thinking.

Paradigms in social science

Research paradigm refers to a shared set of often-unspoken assumptions in a scientific community about what can be known, and what is the best way to know it (Kuhn, 1962). ^[1] This shared set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge will guide the research practices of that particular community, and distinguish it from other research communities that follow a different paradigm. We will discuss four such research communities that exist today in Western research landscape – post positivism, constructivism, criticalism, and postmodernism.

Note that the specific order in which we list these research communities is important because each paradigm can be said to have emerged in opposition to the one before it. For example, post positivists form the oldest and the most traditional community of researchers. This paradigm of research is what most people are thinking of when they think of a ‘scientific study’. Some social scientists who were trained in the postpositivist paradigm were dissatisfied with the constraints and limitations of this paradigm, and this discontent led them to rebel, and break away to form a separate research community. From this community, emerged the paradigm that we today know as constructivists. The emergence of critical and postmodern paradigm follows a similar trajectory.

Although this is an oversimplified version of the history of research paradigms, framing it this way can help novice researchers grasp the significance of each paradigm, and better understand why each paradigm attracts passionate defenders and opponents. We believe this approach will help readers avoid the common trap of seeing each research paradigm like an item one must pick from a shopping catalogue when embarking on a new research study. Instead, we wish for the reader to understand each paradigm as a living and evolving community of researchers formed around a particular belief system about the nature of reality and knowledge.

In this chapter, we introduce the key beliefs of each paradigm community. However, remember that no community is a monolith. As with any community, these communities are characterized by internal debates, tensions, and generational rifts. Most of time, these internal tensions among researchers within a paradigm remain under the surface without significantly disrupting the overall community. In rare instances, the tensions can bubble over due to growing discontent among a faction of researchers who feel their traditional mode of research is no longer able to adapt to the newer developments happening around them. After trying in vain to reform the existing paradigm, some of these researchers decide to make a clean break from the existing paradigm, and end up in a breakaway group which goes on to become its own paradigm that is much more responsive to the changing world. After enjoying a period of success, this paradigmatic community may undergo a similar cycle. According to Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science who popularized the term paradigm, this is the story of how science has evolved over thousands of years.

Now let’s look at four of the most common social scientific paradigms that might guide you as you begin to think about conducting research. Remember that each paradigm is a living breathing community of researchers, rather than a checklist of words. Thus, when we describe the key beliefs of each paradigm community, we mean that in the broadest sense. We encourage readers to do further reading to familiarize themselves with the internal differences within each community.

Post Positivism

Post-positivism is the first paradigm we will consider, as it represents the most conventional understanding of science as it is practiced today. As the prefix ‘post-’ indicates, this paradigm is a development over positivism, the original paradigm of science since 1800s, before it received some upgrades in the 1960s to become Positivism 2.0, also known as post positivism. Although post positivists updated some of the philosophical claims of positivism to keep up with the times, the two do not differ significantly in terms of how they ‘do’ science. For this reason, we do not treat positivism and post positivism as two separate paradigms. Some textbooks and articles geared toward newcomers may even use the two interchangeably, although post positivism is the more accurate term for describing the reigning paradigm of science today.

Post positivists are guided by the principles of objectivity, “knowability,” and deductive logic. Post positivists argued that reality exists independently of the human mind, and that through a process of elimination, we can get closer to knowing this reality (although we will never reach it). Social scientists who operate from this paradigm retain positivism’s emphasis on sensory data (i.e., data which can be directly seen or heard) over other forms of data such as people’s subjective perceptions and interpretation of their surroundings. Post positivism also calls for a value-free science, one in which researchers minimize their emotional investments or agendas in a quest for the objective truth.

While the intention of post positivism to seek objective truth free from researcher bias seems in keeping with the fundamental goals of science, in practice this paradigm can lead to two possible missteps in how one conducts research. First, a researcher may believe they are conducting a study objectively, and thus their conclusions are also devoid of personal biases. However, they may be limited by their own positionality to see an alternative vantage point on the information. Take, for instance, scientific studies of intelligence where white/European scientists used “intelligence tests” to measure the intelligence of different racial groups. When white participants scored significantly more than non-white participants, they interpreted this to mean that white people are more intelligent than non-white people. They failed to consider that the score differences might have less to do with any actual differences in intelligence, and more to do with the specific way in which they had conceptualized constructs such as “intelligence” and “smartness”. They were defining these constructs in ways that felt most familiar to them as white upper-class men living in WEIRD societies. WEIRD refers to an acronym for societies that are Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democracies, and are the minority of the population of the world (recent data suggested that WEIRD people represent about 12% of the world’s population but nearly 90% of psychological samples!). Thus, even when a researcher takes a post positivist approach, guided primarily by the pursuit of empirical, objective truth, their own perspective and positionality still impact the conclusions they draw.

A second misstep of post positivist perspective is that its emphasis on information which can be observed through our senses severely restricts what can be studied. For example, social scientists cannot directly observe people’s thoughts, passions, emotions, desires, and intentions because these are not material objects such as atoms or microorganisms. Due to the demands of their paradigm, they have to find some way to make these objects material, by converting them into a paper-pencil surveys or even brain imaging technologies. But these survey responses and MRI scans are extremely poor substitutes for that person’s internal world. And any theory built out of this data is itself going to be extremely poor version of what’s going in people’s minds. Thus, while the postpositivist paradigm has contributed to many groundbreaking discoveries, its reliance on empiricism can only get us so far before we are faced with the choice of stopping and turning back, or transitioning to a newer paradigm that allows us to go further into the study of the social world.

Constructionism

Building from the positivist paradigm, another predominant paradigm in social sciences is constructivism (although some may prefer the term interpretivism or naturalism (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 1998)^[2]. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman (1966)^[3] are credited by many for having developed this perspective in sociology. While postpositivists seek to understand the objective reality of a situation, constructivists argue people create a reality as opposed to a reality existing out there waiting to be discovered. Because people create truth rather that discover it, truth is different based on who you ask, and people change their definitions of truth all the time based on their interactions with other people. According to this paradigm, we create reality through our interactions and the interpretations that we have of our interactions.

Researchers operating within this framework take keen interest in how people come to socially agree, or disagree, about what is real and true. To better understand the idea of relativity and constructivism, consider how certain hand gestures can connote different meanings across the globe. When someone raises their middle finger in North America, we can safely assume that neither the person raising the finger nor the person to whom the finger is being directed are very happy. Other gestures, such as the thumbs up, may carry similar eyebrow-raising meanings in other societies and cultures. While the thumbs up gesture has a particular meaning in North American culture, that is not shared across cultures (Wong, 2007). ^[4] So where does the meaning of hand gestures reside? Does it reside inside the raised middle finger? If post positivists were to dissect a hand with a raised middle finger or examine it under an X-Ray machine, would they find the source of the obscenity in there? Constructivists argue that the meaning of the gesture does not lie in the physical hand itself but in the gesture’s intended meaning and the gesture’s interpretation. In other words, the meaning of the raised finger lies in the social context in which it occurred. Outside of this context, the middle finger is just another finger. But what if the intended meaning of the initiator and the interpretation of the receiver of the gesture are at odds with one another, then who is “right”? A constructivist would claim that there is no one universal truth, and that both the initiator’ and the receiver’s version is “true” even though the two truths contradict each other.

It would be a mistake to think of the constructivist perspective as only individualistic. While individuals may construct their own realities, groups as small as married couples and as large as nations also agree on notions of truth. In other words, the meanings that we construct have power beyond the individual people who create them. Therefore, constructivists are equally interested in the initial creation of meanings and the ways that people and groups work to redefine meanings.

However, a person’s (or couple’s or nation’s) constructed reality does not exist in a vacuum separate from the world around them, and constructivism has historically not accounted for how things like power dynamics, privilege, and historical context impact the construction of ‘truth’. For instance, if a white male boss at a company comments about a Black female employee’s hair being “unprofessional,” the boss’ reality may be that they are being helpful to their employee by suggesting how she should present herself in the workplace. But the employee’s reality is that she experienced a microaggression, and now feels harmed or unsafe in the workplace. Whose reality is “true”? Was the boss merely being helpful or was he being racist? Constructivism may explore how different parties involved in this conflict interpret the situation, and how cultural and historical factors (e.g., the stigmatization of Black women’s hair) influence their respective perspectives. But constructivists do not take sides, or inquire whose version of truth is more likely to be believed in a society. In this case, the white boss’ version of truth is more like to be believed than the Black female employee’s version because of a combination of white privilege and male privilege.

Thus one of the discontent with constructivism was its lack of attention to the role of power in shaping who gets to construct the truth. Constructivism has significantly advanced our appreciation and understanding of how “truth” varies depending on a person’s vantage point; however, it did not highlight the structural and systemic foundations that privilege one vantage point over the others.

Critical

Thus, a third paradigm is the critical paradigm. At its core, the community of researchers associated with the critical paradigm is focused on understanding the role of power in shaping social reality. Although some rather diverse perspectives are included here, the critical paradigm generally includes ideas developed by early social theorists, such as Max Horkheimer (Calhoun, Gerteis, Moody, Pfaff, & Virk, 2007),^[5] and later works developed by feminist scholars, such as Nancy Fraser (1989).^[6] and critical race theorists like Derrick Bell (Bell, 2005). ^[7] All of these theorists were interested in understanding how social institutions like media, academia, church, market, and judiciary are engaged in creating a reality that justifies and normalizes the oppression of different groups. For example, a critical race scholar may study how a city government maintains segregation in the city by building fewer bus routes between the predominantly white and predominantly Black parts of the city. Given that the city officials are bound to deny the accusations of racism in shaping this policy, the researcher would be especially interested in doing a deep dive into the city’s bus system, understanding how it works, who runs it, how decisions are made, what rationales or factors influence these decisions, and how the system impacts the Black residents of the city. The researcher may then publish these findings in local media, and/or use it to build a legal case against the city.

Thus, unlike the positivist paradigm, the critical paradigm posits that social science can never be truly objective or value-free. Further, this paradigm operates from the perspective that scientific investigation should be conducted with the express goal of social change in mind. Researchers in the critical paradigm might begin with the knowledge that systems are biased against others, such as women or marginalized ethnic groups, and use their research projects to foster positive change in the research participants and the systems being studied. In this way, they differ from both post positivists and constructionists who believe a researcher must remain impartial and aloof in order to be able to do good research. In sum, the critical paradigm not only studies power imbalances but also seeks to change them. More on the critical paradigm will be discussed in the following chapters.

Postmodernism

Finally, postmodernism is a paradigm that challenges almost every way of knowing that many social scientists take for granted (Best & Kellner, 1991).^[8] While positivists claim that there is an objective, knowable truth that can be grasped by a researcher, postmodernists would say that there is not. While social constructionists may argue that truth is constructed by individuals, postmodernists would claim that the individual is herself a product of the society and therefore the ‘truth’ she constructs is not truly coming from her, but from the society as a whole.  Finally, while the critical paradigm may focus on seeking justice and equity for the oppressed, postmodern researchers may encourage them to think more mindfully about how their specific notions of justice or equity are also limited by the dominant ideologies (such as capitalism, incrementalism, etc.) in the society where they grew up, and encourage them to imagine what justice could like outside of that frame. As you might imagine, the postmodernist paradigm poses quite a challenge for researchers. How do you study something that may or may not be real, and that only exists when a society speaks or talks about it? This fascinating question is worth pondering as you begin to think about conducting your own research. Part of the value of the postmodern paradigm is its emphasis on the limitations of human knowledge. Table 3.1 summarizes each of the paradigms discussed here.

Let’s work through an example. If we are examining a problem like cannabis addiction, what would a social scientific investigation look like in each paradigm? A postpositivist study may focus on proving that cannabis addiction truly exists, and may precisely measure the prevalence of cannabis abuse and finding out the key causes or contributors to this problem. Forgoing the investment in proving whether or not cannabis addiction exists, a constructivist might focus on how people who are constructed by the society as “cannabis addicts” understand their relationships with cannabis. In addition, the researchers may also look at how their family members or community perceives them and their substance use. In doing so, constructivists seek to illuminate the multiple ways to understand cannabis users. A study in the critical paradigm may investigate the racist history of laws criminalizing cannabis use, and document the disproportionate impact of these laws on minoritized people. A postmodern study may deconstruct the concept of ‘addiction’ and ‘treatment’ to show how the language used by positivists, constructionists, and critical researchers, to talk about this issue is drawing from some of the same discourses that contributed to the criminalization of cannabis in the first place. The postmodern research may also highlight how the uncritical use of this language on “addiction” is preventing them from imagining other more helpful ways to engage with this issue. These examples should illustrate how one topic can be investigated across each paradigm.

Social science theories

Much like paradigms, theories provide a way to look at the world and understand human interaction. Paradigms are grounded in over-arching, general assumptions about the nature of reality and truth, and what it means to ‘know’ something. Theories, on the other hand, describe more specific phenomena. A common definition for theory in social science is “a systematic set of interrelated statements intended to explain some aspect of social life” (Rubin & Babbie, 2017, p. 615). ^[9] At the core, theories can provide explanations for many phenomena. They help us answer the “why” and “how” questions we often have about the patterns we observe in social life. While paradigms may point us in a particular direction with respect to our “why” questions, theories more specifically map out the explanation, or the “how,” behind the “why.”

Just as researchers might examine the same topic from different levels of inquiry or paradigms, they could also investigate the same topic from different theoretical perspectives. In this case, their research questions could be the same, but the way they conceptualize their observations will be largely shaped by theory.

Within each area of specialization in psychology, there are many theories that aim to explain more specific types of interactions. For example, the study of sexual harassment includes different theories that posit varying explanations of why harassment occurs. One theory, first developed by criminologists, is called routine activities theory. It posits that sexual harassment is most likely to occur when a workplace lacks unified groups and when potentially vulnerable targets and motivated offenders are both present (DeCoster, Estes, & Mueller, 1999).^[10] Other theories of sexual harassment, called relational theories, suggest that a person’s relationships, such as their marriages or friendships, are the key to understanding why and how workplace sexual harassment occurs and how people will respond to it when it does occur (Morgan, 1999).^[11]  Relational theories focus on the power that different social relationships provide (e.g., married people who have supportive partners at home might be more likely than those who lack support at home to report sexual harassment when it occurs). Finally, feminist theories of sexual harassment take a different stance. These theories posit that the organizational structure of our gender system, where those who are the most masculine have the most power, best explains why and how workplace sexual harassment occurs (MacKinnon, 1979).^[12] As you might imagine, the theory a researcher applies to examine the topic of sexual harassment will shape the questions the researcher asks. It will also shape the explanations the researcher provides for why harassment occurs.

For students beginning their study of a new topic, it may be intimidating to learn that there are so many theories beyond what you’ve learned in your theory classes. What’s worse is that there is no central database of different theories on your topic. However, as you review the literature in your topic area, you will learn more about the theories that scientists have created to explain how your topic works in the real world. In addition to peer-reviewed journal articles, books are another valuable source to learn theories related to your topic. Books often contain works of theoretical and philosophical importance that are beyond the scope of an academic journal.

Paradigm and Theory in Psychology

In addition to paradigms and theories, the levels of analysis and the order in which one proceeds in the research process influence the questions we ask about the social world, how we ask them, and even what we may find. A micro-level study of gangs will look much different than a macro-level study of gangs. In some cases, you could apply multiple levels of analysis to your investigation, but doing so isn’t always practical or feasible. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the different levels of analysis and be aware of which level you are employing. One’s theoretical perspective will also shape a study. In particular, the chosen theory will not only shape the way a question is asked but also which topic will be investigated in the first place. Further, commitment to one theory over another may limit the kinds of questions you pose and could result in missing other possible explanations.

Social science is not fundamentally biased due to the limitations of paradigms and theories, but at the same time, it can never be completely value-free. Social constructionists, criticalists, and postmodernists might point out that bias is always a part of research to at least some degree. Our job as researchers is to recognize and address our biases as part of the research process, if an imperfect part. We frame and conduct our work by using our own theories, levels of analysis, temporal processes, and paradigms. Understanding those frames and approaches is crucial not only for successfully embarking upon and completing any research-based investigation, but also for responsibly reading and understanding others’ work.