David James: How to get clear about method, methodology, epistemology and ontology, once and for all

okay let's make a start sorry to interrupt you I know you're enjoying yourself and that's great I hope it's worth interrupting you because this is a session based on something I've run with some doctoral students in the Wales DTC and elsewhere and they've said it's helped them a lot especially early in their study so let's hope it does some of you as well and so I'd like to start if we may by asking you to have a brief conversation again but this time a very focused one I'd like you to talk to somebody preferably that you don't know for a couple of minutes about this title so look at this title how to get clear about method methodology epistemology and ontology once and for all I'd like you to try and agree with between yourselves in about three minutes total what you know about this what what's unclear about it for you particularly what's troubling about those terms if anything it may be that's all totally clear to you I don't know but start by sharing your impressions of that title for three minutes and then I'll rudely stop you again and get going with the first bit of the presentation Thanks okay how to get clear about method methodology histology and ontology once and for all I want to start with where we finish in this little session and with this image the metaphor of an iceberg and the iceberg is a really good metaphor for thinking about these terms largely because they are always always always locked together and I realized a long time ago but in a sudden revelation during my own PhD actually that these these terms that we're struggling with here are always locked together they're not separate things and that's why the iceberg is such a great metaphor you probably know actually the icebergs are characterized by you know this amazing property really that when they when they're floating around in the sea there's only about 10 to 12 percent of them showing did you know that just as in the picture that's the only bit you see above the surface that's important for my metaphor also important for using this metaphor is this actually just as important that if you chop a piece of the iceberg off like the bit you can see and put that in the water it becomes a new iceberg that is only ten percent of it will show that's kind of really useful for this metaphor as well um more importantly than that even perhaps is that it's hard to see below the water it's really hard to see all that stuff underneath as the you know the captain of the Titanic and many of its passengers found out it's really really hard to see where it goes what shape of it is how what the extent is what the nature of it under there because it's deep down it's also dangerous for shipping it's hard to see and finally it's a beautiful thing and I happen to think that when you think through your research in this sort of way it does become if not beauty then a thing a thing to be appreciated at least so it's not a bad metaphor but let me get a bit more specific I want to suggest that the bit that you can see because it's characteristically popularly understood rightly or wrongly but it's characteristically well described in research projects is methods the tip of the iceberg so when we did good social research typically the techniques for data gathering are clearly described and communicated you know I use this I did it that way I did it this time I did it with these people I did it with those data over there and I did it in the following manner and of course that's a baseline requirement for good research you may interview it may include rather common things like interviews questionnaires surveys observation participant observation typically in social science you find a spirit of such methods but also you know experimental arrangements sometimes or photo elicitation there's a whole range of potential vehicles for gathering data are much much longer list than we've got here for you to employ the Bonnie Crawford before lunch was talking about having got interested in in you know virtual environments virtual world such as a way of gathering data may be very interesting anyway there's a whole range of these things but there's also a range of analytical techniques which I would call methods so things like coding if you've got qualitative data coding data is usually meth it's a method because you do it methodically you do it methodically you do it systematically do it in a way that you can describe but this thing's like discourse analysis that some people use numerous other methods of statistical inference and description from you know simple means and averages and stuff measures of dispersion through two most complex of regression models or other statistical techniques and these these things that are the stuff you describe my point if I haven't said it enough is that it's the tip of the iceberg it's the tip it's not the rest so what's the rest well most methods I hope you like my drawing of an iceberg done on a done with a mouse so not very good just below the surface well the first thing just below the surface II do catch glimpses of it through the murky water sometimes when you're reading a research report is methodology and the best way to understand this because in my experience this is often confused with methods people say what's your methodology what they mean is what's your methods the ology means there's been a debate or a study of the methods its ology of methods so methodology is a little bit harder to see but the fact is there's been some debate and some decisions have been made some choices have been made about methods and design about what to do first what to do second what to do last when how and and there are always alternatives there many many alternatives in all those decisions and this adds up to an approach your study has an approach which is correctly I think you could say the outcome of your methodology your methodological considerations so the terms used very loosely every projects different people often account for their approach or their methodology returns like qualitative quantitative or mixed methods even terms like case study ethnography or experiment usually refer to a methodological resolution of some sort and of course disciplines differ in which of these they favor or promote or encourage you know you can be you can be very mainstream in one discipline but very wacky in another because your method isn't really adopted in the second one very widely I had a PhD student that I was attached to loosely in Latvia recently because 2/3 of her data was qualitative one of the examiners refused to read it and only read the third that was quantitative that's an extreme case and I think it's time he retired but um you know it can it can happen but that's just an illustration of how how these things are sometimes read so methodology just below the surface it's the set of discussions debates decisions choices and the argument why this rather than that it's logistical its pragmatic it's about expense resources time it's a whole series of decisions and debates leading to how you did your study but it's not quite the same as methods good methods is what you end up with why am I saying all this well there's a bit more to the iceberg as you can see and I want to suggest that underneath methodology and methods but still remember the iceberg if you chop a bit off it just sinks again this is all necessary it's always all there ok what's what else is there well there's epistemology where does this term come from first of all my point is the deeper still all research comes with a view of knowledge so it's about a view of knowledge put simply and most simply I can say I can describe this term is that it's about what is knowable and worth knowing it's a it's a decision and a debate leading to a decision about what is knowable and worth knowing it's pretty straightforward actually this term because it comes from the ancient Greek word for knowledge Epis stem so it's the ology of knowledge is the debate about what knowledge is and if you look at some of plato's work you'll see a distinction between this concept knowledge knowledge of the world Epis stem and what he calls dr. which is everyday beliefs so in plato's work that distinction is very very important between between what everybody thinks they know sort of common sense beliefs everyday knowledge and proper knowledge really secure knowledge or knowledge that's worth having very interesting that that distinction is there and interesting to for me because I'm a bit sometimes a bit of a border fan and border users that picks up the term doctor and does even more with it I think to talk about everyday knowledge what goes without saying and so forth so epistemology simple it's the ology of knowledge it's any debate about what it is to know in your field so philosophically speaking is the study of how we go knowing things how we know whether things are true or false what steps we need to take to gain knowledge of the world I'm going to tell you a little story now I think Pam's reminded me that stories are a really good way of communicating and I'm come back to that point when I was doing my PhD is quite a while ago it was about mature student experience and I was studying mature students in a university to see really what they were able to take from their education what the what they gained from it primarily and so I started reading the literature about mature students there's quite a lot actually surprising around and read this stuff you know which your students this mature students that and then I thought of somehow I've got to put this together in a literature review so started sort of read rereading the stuff and and and found it really really hard to summarize some of this literature and then I realized why it was hard and it was hard because there were completely different views of what it is to know underpinning those studies and I'll give you an example so it was an epistemological problem I was facing okay in one at the time in one very large and at the time well-known state-sponsored study of mature students mature students about about I think ten twelve thousand of them in the UK had been sent postal questionnaires and put part of that questionnaire was about their experience okay about three or four questions and the results of that survey in a nutshell were that mature students were having a fabulous experience in higher education you know the questions were things like in general I feel I can approach my tutor for clarification yes don't know no or at least at least that possibly a small Likert scale anyway I'm very positive view from nigh on 12,000 cases okay that was one bit of literature at the same time as reading a study by Susan while who was then at the Institute of Education in London about mature student experience it based on a PhD she'd done participant observation with two groups just two groups of mature students in two different institutions in London small numbers about you know 15 20 in each but she'd spent quite a long time talking to them and quite a long time alongside them her view was diametrically opposite to the first study her view was on the basis of this research that mature students were having a time they're having a horrible time no one took any notice of their background or experience and strengths and knowledge they brought course they were treated like kids they were infantilized by assessment regimes I could go on I've got these two things which one is right with the conventional view the conventional view is one of them's got a decent sample and must be right and the other ones just a few people must be wrong then it dawned on me that it wasn't that simple the what we've got here was not just the difference in sample size but a difference in the way experience was being constructed to study experience was being constructed as a categorical response in one study I'm not saying that's that's that's wrong it's a way of doing it and it was being constructed as a lived temporal set of experiences in the other so experience itself if you ask the question what is knowable than worth knowing about experience was being constructed in two different ways and that led to different results and I could go on with other examples but I think that's enough to perhaps underline this point in your field this will matter as well when you read prior literature about your your topic of interest or those related to it not only does it say different things and where the studies done differently but there will have different assumptions underpinning them as well the object of study will be constructed in slightly different ways does that make sense so far yeah okay and finally there I thought any view of the relationship between theory and practice implies an epistemological position a famous epistemological position would be the one that came from Descartes the philosopher popularly known this as Cartesian dualism and if you've heard of that but for Descartes there was a pretty clear hierarchy between the mind and the brain and the body so you know the mind works out stuff what to do and then the body does it this is this is fine as far as it goes until you try to use it to understand something like driving a car um in driving a car that sort of conscious deliberation decision decision to act it's a rarity and you hope it doesn't happen that often actually cuz it's usually when there's an accident about to happen most of the time you think with your body you react because the situation's familiar enough for you to have a series of responses attuned to the way the car works so Cartesian dualism isn't terribly useful if you want to understand something like that but it's it's an epistemological position and there are many others is that there's a fantastic series of debates about the nature of professional knowledge very interesting which and amongst others Richard Sennett has argued that you can't codify most professional knowledge you can't write it down so you might have standards you might have tests and exams and you know all that stuff to do with making sure the professionals are good but if only part of the job is ever covered by those that's a bit of a problem you know you need to recognize says Senate that doing a job well isn't all codify herbal anyway epistemology very important part the iceberg always there in your study whether you like it or not and you can even if you choose not to write about this directly it's a really good thing to sort of appreciate it it will make you write better so their system ology there is something else though hmm which is ontology there's another easy term really is easy the Greek the ancient Greeks had a word for being to be the verb to be which is on tous so ontology is simply any debate ology about being what it is to be what it is to exist ontology okay this is always there then it's again it's deeper in the iceberg as I said it's always there some idea is always there about what it is to be human social being to exist and so forth so there's always an ontology in any study and in any discipline ontological questions in the bigger sense include things like what is existence you know pretty pretty wacky philosophical question of these what is the nature of existence so big stuff for social scientists perhaps to be slightly more specific the ontological concerns are underpin our work tend to be things like this are people essentially selfish I mean some economists treat them as if they are don't they some economics disciplines in economics view people through that lens and as always maximizing personal gain or whatever and certainly some policies seem to as well and certainly some people behave like that so no you can see why and why people would take that view do people calculate costs and benefits of all their actions similar sort of question but it's an ontological question are there universal features of social organization if you go into anthropology so there have been schools of anthropologists who thought there were or are these universal features of social and human organization which you can find in every society and there are other schools of anthropologists who challenge that idea as well and yet others who've tried to world the two together and again you know do people always know the consequences of their actions is that in my field some of the time is education and for me there's a sort of worrying trend in some educational research that it's a bit sort of romantic I think which is that people people you get data from have to agree with your interpretation of that data I think that's bonkers myself but there's a lot people believe in that and and that's part of their ontological position as well as a reduced illogical position because they see that as doing ethical honorable research that doesn't hurt people you know quite see it that way but so there's an ontological rift there between how they and I would do research say on teachers or head teachers anyway so so this kind of matters - and it's right there as part of the iceberg I want you to do something for ten minutes I'd like you to again this is with a person you don't know okay see works best if it's with someone you don't know I think you need to if you haven't done so already find out what their PhD study is or is likely to be about secondly could you find out what methods they're using or anticipate using they may not know of course I don't know but they may what have been their options and dilemmas thus far and then for the really important bit in a way is please could you help them articulate these options and choices made or dilemmas that they face using the terms method methodology epistemology an ontology okay simple go I wondered if there was anyone who was kind of brave enough to tell us how these terms make them feel at the moment and what they're wrestling with or resolving actually in relation to these questions so we've got it we've got a roving mic with Carol at the back there so we'd all be able to hear you which is good and was anyone brave enough to do that I wonder tell us about your discussion just now somebody here is willing to do it thank you yeah sorry I didn't see with the light in my eyes so there's a microphone coming to you so you've got even more time to think about what to say thank you hi and I think for me I'm really struggling with kind of the theories that underpin and kind of my epistemological position in terms of kind of I'm becoming quite pragmatic about actually you know if I'm doing this then I'm going to be positivist and I'm doing this I'm going to be constructivist and and I'm struggling with kind of unpicking realism and critical realism and so I'm a social worker and I'm doing good so for me critical realism really speaks about those invisible structures and mechanisms within society that push us to do things but at the same time I'm very much in the position that we create our own experience and our realities individual as maybe were having a discussion with an economic students that's really quite a big difference for both of us but yeah so that's that's for me that's where my dilemma is at the moment is having finally grappled those terms yeah after quite a lot of alcohol and tears finally kind of understood them now I'm really stuck and struggling with kind of I feel a pressure to put my hat and or to put my flag in one of them and say I'm a critic II really yeah yeah it just it is tricky I mean a lot of doctoral students I've met feel they have to become one of those and I think that's the wrong thing to do I think you have to decide where you stand and it might be in relation to more than one of those positions what you've got to do is find a position you can articulate and that makes sense to you and and it is a struggle but thank you for that insight yeah and anyone else once would be able to tell us how they are engaging with these terms or how they're struggling with them even thank you yeah in the middle thanks Carol my research is about big data text data so I don't have much trouble with six selected methods they are quite established and with methodology I quite struggle though with with ontology in that because I'm not sure exactly myself was the relationship between the data and the actual existing phenomena in this world so mike is my research really proving anything or is it just like let's say the world is like this or like that it's quite uncertain especially with machine learning so for example in my project and I'm trying to work out the correlation between customer reviews and that the words each choice the amount of ratings given to different products and the life cycle stage of the product so whether their sales are declining or increasing and you know what is the relationship within those those choices of what people write and what they actually reflects and why do they affect sales because I guess that's what the company will want to know but I'm not really sure you can say about okay well thanks that's a that's a interesting reminder I think that that phd's differ in lots of ways clearly one of the ways they differ is is the extent to which they are in a position to produce different kinds of originality some some PhDs original in the sense that they break new ground in terms of methodology and therefore you know the issue issue issues of epistemology ontology come right through other PhDs are original because the substantive question that they're asking or answering and or that they're in a new way of working but we're always located in a field and and the the field always will you know carry its own expectations about what good science normal science is at that time and can I just ask how many people in the room if any have read Thomas Kuhns the structure of scientific revolutions Wow it's about five or six that's really really good and when you get the email about the slides it's referenced on the end of my slides it was written in 1962 it's a really accessible and important insight into the sociology of knowledge and and sort of philosophy of knowledge with examples from the sciences so do do have a look at that because I think it helps unpack these things as to the way disciplines proceed okay thanks for those and what I'd like to do just briefly is to is to point out a couple of other terms that sort of overlay on these things in a particular way terms that you would have heard or that you already use so if that's the diagram we just seen it's not another word on it which is a German word meaning worldview or position veldt and Chelm um probably not pronounced all that well that um I think it's a nun Li listen actually hear that but they might world view position it means it doesn't quite mean world view which is why didn't put world view it means it means the position from which you speak the way you characteristically see the world as a result of all these other things so you know you will have a world view whether or not you fully articulate it ever is another question or the degree to which it becomes articulated as you work is another question there's another word that might be even more familiar than there which is paradigm as anyone in the room read Thomas Kuhns the structure of scientific revolutions no I didn't think you would have this came out in 1962 oh you have okay so you have great weather most people haven't it came out in 1962 it's probably one of the best sort of most accessible but deep considerations of the philosophy of knowledge and science that there is lots of people have reacted to it in various ways and refined it but but is that's really why we use the word paradigm and because Thomas Kuhn coined it in that study and essentially in a nutshell he's arguing that in any discipline that I think would normal science a way of doing the work which becomes a paradigm and that periodically it's overturned because there are more and more anomalies or problems that Kant can't deal with and so I suppose the reason I put it on here is I want to suggest that when you have an approach in your study a methodology and when you've started to appreciate or at least in in argument articulate the epistemological and ontological roots of your work how it sits with other work you are as it were articulating your paradigm it's another way of talking about the same thing really okay so so that's that's there and I wanted to just to finish there a couple of other things about this metaphor and why I think you should take it away with you and continue to think about it in relation to your own work when you read other stuff other people's stuff when you write your own stuff not just the methodology bits in the method bits why the iceberg well my first argument is that all four elements that his methods methodology epistemology and ontology are always present in a research project we can't pretend they're not and we can't simply ignore them to be good researchers I would argue they need acknowledging the world would be a simple place if you could turn your back on them but I don't think you can secondly they're always closely related and codependent so if you quite fancy doing postal questionnaires or QED sorts or you know a particular test to get your data it's partly for pragmatic reasons it's partly that maybe for aesthetic reasons or it might be because you think it would be interesting but underneath it there will be views of knowledge views of the world lurking about washing about and and and you need to get those out and look at them there'll be different histories for you in which to operate depending on your discipline and of course you might have more than one discipline or you might be in a particular corner of a discipline so you know that's that's something you've got to remember that you're you you you have even if you're interdisciplinary you have a discipline connection and then I think the core of my argument is this leads to better research this leads to better theses it leads certainly to better literature beer reviews and just to remind you I'm arguing that the stuff you look at will have differences in it which you can discern by the language by the method that's been used and what's been revealed to you about how it was done great to organize your literature review along those lines not just you know chronologically or in terms of schools or fields but maybe in terms of their view of the topic how are they looking at what you're looking at how are they constructing it secondly there it will help you write a good methodology chapter or chapters the chapters where you account for your methods and for the decisions that led to them and the design and and how you ended up where you did doing the kind of study that you did and your appreciation of its strengths and weaknesses too and thirdly at the bottom there it will help you to achieve confidence and coherence both in the written thesis but also when you speak about your work in a variety of arenas including the viper of course so so I think you know not a bad metaphor to thing with and I just wanted to end with my three this is kind of related my three favorite quotes they're really sort of about theory but if you read them read in here theory to mean all the things we've been talking about you know the ontological underpinnings the epistemological position bell hooks says everything we do in life is rooted theory everything whether we consciously explore the reasons we have particular perspective or particular action take a particular action there is also an underlying system shaping thought and practice you know she puts that so well like I couldn't think of a better way of putting that kurt lewin of course famously there's nothing so practical as a good theory and that's whether you're making policy or fixing a bike puncture you know good theory matters a lot in both situations and finally henry giroux experienced never simply speaks for itself the language we bring to it determines its meaning anyway I hope that's of some use to you today and afterwards thanks for listening and enjoy the next session Cheers

Channel: WalesDTP

Views: 87,161

Rating: 4.8669834 out of 5

Keywords: Epistemology (Field Of Study), Methodology, Ontology (Field Of Study), Social Science (Field Of Study), ESRC

Id: b83ZfBoQ_Kw

Length: 36min 18sec (2178 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2015