ABSTRACT

The choice and application of research methodologies are determined by a wide range of factors, including personal ideological perspectives as well as more pragmatic decisions linked to research questions or hypotheses, and the conditions and context in which the research will be carried out. Guba and Lincoln (2005) present a range of research paradigms that include positivism, postpositivism, critical theory, constructivism–interpretivism and participatory research, each having distinct ontological, epistemological and methodological bases, but acknowledging also that the boundaries between these paradigms are shifting constantly.