Philosophical Approach To Qualitative Research

Philosophical perspective

The selection of philosophical perspective of the research is usually based on the research question. When undertaking research, it is important to consider different research philosophies. The basic philosophical approaches are ontology, epistemology and axiology.

Ontology describes the view of the researcher on the nature of reality. It is the assumptions the researcher makes in his mind about the way in which the world works. ’The first aspect of ontology is objectivism. This portrays the position that social entities exist in reality external to social actors concerned with their existence. The second aspect, subjectivism, holds that social phenomena are created from the perceptions and consequent actions of

The case study for WCC will require using mixed method of data collection. The qualitative data collection will require researcher to conduct interviews and observations to understand the various cultural issues of the employees of WCC. The quantitative data will be collected through survey. Some data that are collected through qualitative method can be quantified to figures and numbers.

Secondary research is the analysis of data that have already been collected by others. For the WCC research project secondary data will come from the literature review and from the employee’s statistics to analyse the representation of different ethnic groups, different age groups, religion and gender. The financial aspect of the employees in term of salary package and incentives will also be useful to understand the problems of the employees.

Sampling

Sampling is a good method when it is not possible to collect data from the whole population. Because of time and resource constraint, it is not possible to collect data from the total population and the best way is to do probability

Data display is to organize the reduced data in a diagrammatic or visual display. Mile & Huberman (1994) explains that the data display can be in the form of matrices or in the form of network or both. These forms of displays are relatively easy to generate and can be developed to fit the project requirement. Mile & Huberman (1994) further state that this will help to develop the analytical thinking through several iterations to develop a visual form of the collected data. The data display will allow making comparison between the different elements of the data and identifying any relationship, key themes, patterns and trends. The conclusion for the research project will be drawn from these comparisons and data