Researchers View Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Researchers View - Essay Example They include advocacy, constructivism, pragmatism, and post-positivism. The purpose of this paper is to assess a researchers’ world view and explain how it influences the approach to research. Makoe, Richardson, and Prince (2008) represent the post-positivism philosophical world view. Post-positivism world view, also known as the scientific method of research deals with reduction research i.e. it reduces ideas into small variables that are used to test the theory and the sample subject. This world view is used to generalize population through qualitative research using a large number of samples. Thus, the research done by Makoe, Richardson, and Prince (2008) used qualitative research to find out the conceptions of adult students embarking on distance education. One assumptions of post-positivism stated by Creswell (2009) are that knowledge is conjectural. This means that the truth can never be found in research, and that is why researchers nullify the hypothesis. For instance according to Makoe, Richardson, and Prince (2008), there is no consensus about how the conceptions of learning can be characterized and whether they constitute a developmental hierarchy. Another assumption according to Creswell (2009) is that data, evidence and rational considerations shape knowledge. This means that the researcher collects the information based on observations or from questionnaires filled by the participants. From the article, researchers collected data using a 60-item questionnaire which were mailed to students taking preparatory courses by distance learning. According to Creswell (2009) in quantitative method of research, researchers reduce ideas into small variables, which they use to formulate questions and hypothesis. In Makoe, Richardson, and Prince (2008), researchers used the information they collected to come up with a hypothesis that all adult learners taking long distance education hold distinctive conceptions of learning; hence they