The Foundations of Social Research Meaning and Perspective in The Res

Question : Answer the following questions : (i) Explain in your own words the purpose of the research and the specific research question. (ii) What justifications have the researcher(s) provided for undertaking the research. (iii) in your own words briefly explain for one of the research articles you selected, the. (a) epistemological viewpoint. (b) theoretical perspective. (iv) Drawing on the set readings and the research articles, make a statement about your own epistemological and theoretical framework this will be assessed not on its correctness but your demonstration of how you think it through (the positioning exercise completed in Workshop 2 will assist). Answer : Purpose of the research: The purpose of Walters research is to acquire a research about the nature of social science by performing a systematic study of the society which also includes the patterns involved in it and also helps in shaping the society and the doings of the people in it. The purpose is to get the answers associated to the social life of the people and the social world. It mainly involves the finding of the science behind the social world. It is to achieve observations, interpretations and classifications about the social lives of the people. The purpose of Dunns and Nelson J.ks research is to highlight the radical forms of multiculturalism which aims at addressing the structural inequality between the ethnic groups which include the various problems of these dominant ethnic groups which have a relationship with the agencies in the states. Racism can be defined as a way of reinforcing inequality and division. There is a deeper challenge of multiculturalism in context to the key policy direction of racism (Berard, Tim J. (2005). Hence Dunn did a research of racism in Australia and showed that the burden of racism across many cultural groups is distributed very unevenly. Through the channel of media it was also shown that many ethnic minorities where either misinterpreted or under- represented in the mainstream. This showed that the minority employment in the public sectors were the over-representation of the Anglo-Australian groups. Justifications have the researcher(s) provided for undertaking the research: In Dunns research there are many justifications of racism which include social costs of it which involves the participation of the poor labour force and also its disruptive social conflicts. There is a very good establishment of the individuals on the count of racism. There is also a very strong need felt by the victims to deny the racism and challenge the deeper multiculturalism and the regular framework of the society which refers to the discourses that are attempted to prescribe what has actually been said about racism and also of the privileged people by following the method of regulation of the gender. In Walters opinion it can justified that the research is been performed by separate qualitative and quantitative methods. The major stances are that it can color and shape the present social research and can be resulted in the positive manner. It also involves in the constructionism, interpretivism, critical enquiry and also feminism. The Epistemological viewpoint: The scientific knowledge that shows only the reality that it has created before as knowledge and also defined as its object limits itself and restricts the possibility of attaining more knowledge of what can be known because it is beyond the legal ways of knowing it. Its operation consists of an institutional control in which research development reaches not only the researchers by determining their options but also their process of analysis but also by specifying what is valid to be known by this research process. So this attained knowledge is therefore the result of present convention in the world of science which is usually associated with the ontology and epistemology and it nature of positivism (Crotty, M. (1998). The theoretical perspective: The theoretical perspective consists of many areas of positivism and also different strands of interpretivism that has been among the most influential theories that exist in the research process. There are also many other stances such as the critical inquiry, feminism and postmodernism. These will be used to explain the value of adopting the theoretical perspectives that are congruent with the researchers epistemology and demonstrate the different kinds of research methodologies that come out from them. Therefore positivism states that reality contains of what is available to the senses, which includes what can be seen, smelt, touched, etc. This information is based upon scientific and therefore on empirical inquiry (Creswell, John W. (1998). Drawing on the set readings and the research articles: After analysis of data, researchers can move ahead to test the hypothesis and the various statistical tests. These test are available to find out whether the data generated through study supports the hypothesis or not (Denzin,(1994). Any number of these tests can be applied to test the hypothesis which will decide whether it can be constructed at the beginning of the study which is to be accepted or rejected. References: Berard, Tim J. (2005). Rethinking practices and structures Philosophy of the Social Sciences,35(2), 196-230. Crotty, M. (1998) The Foundation of Social Research: Meaning and Perspectives in the Research Process. London: Sage. Provides a very readable description and explanation of the major epistemological stances and how they originated. Creswell, John W. (1998).Qualitative inquiry and research design Choosing among five traditions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Denzin, Norman K. Lincoln, Yvonna S.(1994). Introduction: Entering the field of qualitative research. In Norman K. Denzin Yvonna S. Lincoln (Eds.),Handbook of qualitative research(pp.1-17). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.