ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the first of three approaches or paradigms that guide scholarship in research: the social scientific paradigm. The first section defines the social scientific paradigm and traces the development of this paradigm. The second section discusses the significance of the scientific method to the social scientific paradigm. The third section answers met theoretical questions associated with this paradigm. The social scientific paradigm is one of the three theoretical paradigms discussed in this text. Social science is an organized method of research that combines empirical observations of behavior with inductive and deductive logic to confirm and test theories that are then used to describe and/or predict human behaviors and activities. Social scientists have realist ontology; there is a reality out there that is made up of physical and social objects. They do not forget that human beings are still mammals. Social scientists try to be as free of value in their research as possible.
