La medición de las percepciones-actitudes (imagen): Un enfoque funcional

Positivists’ fundamental beliefs about the objectivity and externality of the nature of reality have come from the nineteenth century (Creswell, 2002). Positivists, also called quantitative pursuits, think that educational researchers’ biases should be eliminated,

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and their emotions should remain detached and uninvolved with the objects of the study; they are just to justify their stated hypotheses empirically (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004).

With strong rejection to positivism beliefs, most of social scientists from different schools agree that the social world cannot be understood unless from the perspective of individuals who constitute part of the on-going action under investigation (Cohen et al., 2007). According to Cohen et al. (ibid.), anti-positivists argue that an individuals’ behaviour can only be understood when researchers share their participants frame of reference, advocating that understanding individuals’ interpretations of the world has to come from inside, rather than outside. Thus, social sciences are viewed as subjective, instead of being objective as believed by positivists.

This new alternative stance that opposes positivism has developed into naturalistic, qualitative, and/or interpretive approaches. When qualitative researchers inquire into and observe a phenomenon in their natural settings, they attempt to make sense of or

interpret that phenomenon according to the meanings people assign to them. Rossman and Rallis (2003) believe that this research paradigm is an endeavour to understand the social world as it is, in terms of its individuals’ perspective. Interpretivism assumes “reality is dependent on the meanings of people in society, and such socially constructed reality is ungoverned by any natural laws, causal or otherwise” (Guba and Lincoln, 1989:86). As this inquiry aims at understanding the world from its dwellers’ viewpoint, attempting to reach the meanings group members in question attribute to words and actions, qualitative research has been attributed with the nature of constructivism. Besides, qualitative research is associated with constructivism since all knowledge-

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production in this approach is linked with the assumptions brought to studies by investigators themselves (e.g. Guba and Lincoln, 1994; Clark, 2001).

Rossman and Rallis (2003) view the knowledge that is constructed during a qualitative study as being interpretive. Wellington (2000:16) argues interpretivists believe “the observer makes deference to the observed and reality is a human construct.” In addition, there is also what is referred to by Burr (1995:3) as critical social constructionism that is interpreted as “critical stance towards taken-for-granted knowledge.” As she puts it, this constructionism “invites us to be critical of the idea that our observations of the world unproblematically yield its nature to us.”

According to Johnson and Onwuegbuzie (2004), like the quantitative positivist

paradigm, the qualitative interpretive has also received criticism. For example, there is a lack of systematic standards that help judging the research quality, and the matter of quality judgment is relative to the judge’s experience.

In fact, Positivism and Interpretevism have always been looked upon as the two paradigms which quantitative and qualitative researchers, respectively, persistently assign themselves to. The extremist stance held by both quantitative and qualitative researchers to their advocated paradigms seems to create ‘paradigm wars’. Johnson and Onwuegbuzie (2004:15) argue that engaging in the debate of these two paradigms seems to confuse “the logic of justification with research methods.” That is, some researchers tend to treat epistemology and method synonymously. Johnson and Onwuegbuzie

indicate that the logic of justification, which is a significant aspect of epistemology, does not dictate researchers about the specific data collection and data analytical methods they must use, as the entailment from epistemology to methodology is rare. Hence,

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differences in epistemological beliefs should not inhibit a qualitative researcher from exploiting data collection methods typically associated with quantitative research, and vice versa.

The preceding discussion, in fact, can fit the pragmatic method. The pragmatic paradigm claims that research problem should be prioritised instead of prioritising research

methods. In this paradigm, researchers, as they are not committed to any one system, philosophy and reality, are free to elect procedures, techniques and methods that can best meet their needs and purposes. Indeed, such a philosophy underpins the mixed- methods research (Creswell, 2002). According to Johnson and Onwuegbuzie (2004:16), the bottom line of Pragmatism is: “Research approaches should be mixed in ways that offer the best opportunities for answering important research questions.”

The mixed-methods paradigm appears to reconcile the situation. It can be viewed as bridging “across the sometimes adversarial divide between quantitative and qualitative researchers” (Creswell and Clark, 2011:12). This approach of mixed-methods has gained wide recognition and popularity during the second half of the twentieth century. It has been referred to as “the third methodological movement” following the

quantitative then the qualitative research movements (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 2003:3). It is also referred to as, “the third research paradigm” by Johnson and Onwuegbuzie (2004:15).

In fact, the two philosophical traditions, Positivism and Interpretevism, “have dominated the discussion of mixed methods research strategies” (Brannen, 2005:7). Yet, the mixed- methods paradigm overcomes the weaknesses of each of the two approaches, and it is this potential that gives this latter paradigm its strengths (Creswell and Clark, 2011:12). It provides more evidence for studying a research problem, and helps answering

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questions that cannot be answered by conducting either a qualitative or quantitative approaches alone.