75 El proceso que nace de esa relación

The research process is shaped by the researcher‘s worldview or paradigm that is defined as ―a basic set of beliefs that guide action‖ (Guba, 1990:179). As such, it influences the researchers‘ perception of the world and his/her action in terms of the ontological and epistemological perspective as well as the methodological approach adopted (Mason, 2002). Depending on the literature that is consulted consulted the number and types of qualitative research paradigms available to the researcher vary: e.g. the work by Creswell (2007) covers post-positivism, constructionism, advocacy/participatory or pragmatism, whilst Denzin and Lincoln (2005) add the paradigms of queer, feminist, Marxist, cultural studies and ethnic theory.

A key feature of qualitative research is its lack of ownership over a distinctive paradigm, instead it makes use of different worldviews (Creswell, 2007) either by adopting one worldview at a time or by combing multiple compatible paradigm worldviews such as constructionist and participatory worldviews (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005). Last but not least paradigms can be understood, as suggested by Guba and Lincoln (1998), as human constructions, i.e. they derive from ideas, arguments and subjective interpretation and thus are disputable as they fail to establish ultimate truthfulness, or as O‘Leary (2004) words it: ―what might be the truth for one person or cultural group may not be the truth‖ for another‖ (p.6). Building on this perspective, it is my understanding as researcher that rather than viewing paradigms as radical postures that have to be defended at all costs requiring the researcher to deliver proof, they may be understood as frameworks that informs the researcher‘s journey of exploratory discovery. The worldview that I adopted for this thesis centres around the thoughts of interpretivism which combines the concept of rationalism, i.e. the theory that one learns about reality by thinking about it, and relativism which builds on the idea that one‘s reality is subject to perception and as such as always influenced and shaped by culture, history and experiences (Willis, 2007). The interpretivist paradigm has been heavily shaped by the philosophy of Edmund Husserl‘s phenomenology and the work by Wilhelm Dilthey who questioned the application of objectivism, a key feature of positivism (ibid). Both stressed the importance of understanding (or ‗Verstehen‘ in German) and researching the lived experience of people within its interconnected cultural, historical and social contexts. Thus, from these perspectives, research can be understood as a ―holistic rather than atomic process‖ (Willis, 2006:53) which can only take place within the context (Dilthey, 1983). Cutting across interpretivism, the world view of constructionism builds on the concept of reality being a social construct which

cannot be understood when stripped of its context (Charmaz, 2006; Willis, 2007). Depending on which text is read, this paradigm has been given various names such as ‗naturalistic inquiry‘ (Kuzel, 1986) or ―interpretative thinking or interpretative inquiry (Gadamer, 1986:15; Guba and Lincoln, 1989:48).

Crabtree and Miller (1999) recommend to distinguish between constructionism and interpretivism rather than to marry them as both approaches hold different positions towards truth: while constructionists believe that truth is not an objective but a relative construct as it is the result of individual perspective, interpretivists do not completely dismiss the notion of objectivity and stress the existence of multiple realties (Crabtree and Miller, 1999). On the other hand, Denzin and Lincoln (2005) argue that all research is interpretative as it is influenced by the worldview adopted by the researcher; as result, they describe paradigms including constructionism in qualitative research as ‗interpretative paradigms‘. Similarly, Gephard (1999) unites the genres of interpretivism and constructionism under the shared tenet of subjective meaning, i.e. ―how individuals understand and make sense of social events and settings― (p.4). To complicate the issue further, the terms ‗constructionism‘ and ‗constructivism‘ tend to be interchangeably used (e.g. Crabtree and Miller, 1992, Schwandt, 1994, Mackenzie and Knipe, 2006; Creswell, 2007). In fact these two terms hold different meanings and therefore have to be distinguished. Compared to ‗constructionism‘ as a worldview, ‗constructivism‘ appears in the literature as a philosophy within the realm of learning: as suggested by Rorty (1991) it stems from the belief that individuals construct their knowledge of the world and that they understand their experiences through unique set of rules and mental models that they develop for this purpose and adjust when encountering new experiences. Schwandt (1994) distinguishes between two types of constructionism: ‗radical constructionism‘ with the focus resting on the individual and the way he/she interpret their world in social and historical contexts, and ‗social constructionism‘ that centres around social processes and interaction. The latter is closely linked with theories of symbolic interactionism and ethno-methodology that ―emphasize the actor‘s definition of the situation, that seek to understand how social actors recognize, produce and reproduce social actions, and how they come to share an intersubjective understanding of specific life circumstances‖ (p. 19).

Being aware of the varying terminology and different constructionist genres, I adopted the general term ‗interpretivist constructionism‘ for the chosen research paradigm which shares the interpretitivist assumption that knowledge and meaning are subject to

meaning and knowledge is created within a particular social, cultural or historical context (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005; Creswell, 2007). For example, in view of the research of lived experiences of sport event volunteers, interviewees‘ accounts that are subject to my interpretation as researcher and thus may be differ from somebody else‘s interpretation, have to take into account the personal circumstances of the research participants when exploring what volunteering at a specific sporting event was like for the individual.

The ontological position of the researcher within an adopted paradigm refers to questions about the form and nature of reality of the chosen world view (Snape and Spencer, 2003). In the case of constructionism, the researcher adopts a relativist approach that apprehends the multitude of realities that are cognitively and subjectively constructed, shaped by the social, historical and cultural contexts in which they occur and their content individually or collectively generated (Guba and Lincoln, 1998). Thus, there is no ultimate truth or objective reality as realities are constructs and context- bound (Robson, 2002). In view of this thesis, which explores the lived experience of sport event volunteering and the meaning this activity hold for the individual, I consequently encountered a range of different realities constructed by the individual sport event volunteers.

Epistemology is concerned with the process of learning about the reality (Willis, 2007) and how knowledge and explanations about the components of the reality researched are generated and demonstrated (Mason, 2002). In the case of interpretative constructivism, knowledge is the product of the interpretation and interaction between the researcher and the research participants, in other words research findings are literally created and interpreted throughout the shared primary data collection research process (Guba and Lincoln, 1998). Furthermore, the issue of the relationship between the researcher and the respondent come into play which, in the case of interpretative constructivism, becomes interactive and draws the researcher away from his/her objective view point (Snape and Spencer, 2003) which may affect the position of the researcher. Following the epistemological outline of interpretative constructionism, Denzin and Lincoln (2005) advocate a hermeneutical/interpretative and dialectical methodology that promote the interaction and dialogue between the researcher and the responden, e.g. in the form of semi-structured interviews involving both parties to provide questions and answers, in order to allow the co-production of understanding of

a particular phenomenon. Creswell (2007) is more prescriptive: he suggests that the constructionist viewpoint is anchored in phenomenological studies as well as in the grounded theory perspective of Charmaz (2006).