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Dissertation Suite: Researcher Position

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Join the University of Chester's Academic Skills Team for The Skills Pod. In this episode of our Dissertation Suite, Academic Skills Advisers, Anthony and Sharon, discuss researcher position. They chat about the importance of researcher position, break down some of the key terms you'll come across, and go through ways you might identify your stance. 

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Anthony :

Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of the Skills Pods. My name is Tony, and I'm one of the senior academic skills advisors as part of the academic skills team. And today we're going to be talking about researcher position. And I'm joined by my colleague.

Sharon:

Hi, I'm Sharon, and I'm an academic skills advisor.

Anthony :

Thanks, Sharon, for joining us today. Research position, it's always a complicated one, isn't it? For all of us.

Sharon:

Yeah, it's really difficult to get your head around. And all these long words as well, which we'll be going through like ontology and epistemology, and you think, well, I can't even say them. Never mind, know what they mean and how they relate to my research. So it it is a tough one for all, like Tony said, for all of us.

Anthony :

It is, and those terms are so scary. I remember when I first kind of came across them. Um probably at master's level, we we weren't too concerned at an undergrad on my course about your research position, although it did kind of play a part. But at master's level, particularly, the manding these around and you know, and and when you do your PhD um or for yours is Dprof, Sharon. Was that right? Uh um D, sorry, Ed, sorry, yeah, yeah. Um Eddie, that becomes such an integral part of everything that you do, doesn't it?

Sharon:

Totally. I mean, my background's in science, and you don't consider well, certainly when I was doing my master's, you don't consider this sort of thing, and it is just sort of you do some experiments, you gather some data, you write about it. But when I when I did my edit, um, there was so much information around where you stand and why you're doing it the way you do, and it was it was a real. I was climbing up that hill trying to understand all of this, get my head around it. And actually, I've in the end, I did find it really interesting, and it sounds quite sad, but I really enjoyed writing my methodology chapter and and and figuring all of these bits and pieces out about actually, oh, I am allowed to have a researcher position. It's not just doing an experiment and writing it up. I've got to think about um where I sit and what I believe and why I'm how that then relates into what I'm going to do. And so that's what we're really talking about today is having this position and understanding where you sit on this and how it relates to what you want to do.

Anthony :

Yeah, and what I find really interesting about all this is while we're talking about this today, in the sense of typically it's for a dissertation or a research project, but actually, as you say there, Sean, sitting back and actually thinking about how you view things, it actually translates to everyday life and how you process information, how you view things. It's it's it is a really key thing. Um, so I guess the first thing to talk about today is why why do we even have a researcher position? Like what's the point? So, what we don't want to do is just do methods for the sake of it. So, think about your instruments, a survey or an experiment. There has to be a logical thought process behind your choice of particular instrument. And in research, that is often governed by your reset position. So, if I can kind of give you a bit of an analogy of why this all fits in, is if you think of a tree and the instrument, so the thing you're actually going to do, i.e., a semi-shiped interview or a survey, that's like the leaf of the tree. And obviously, that leaf has to be connected to the tree in some way, and that's what our branch is. So your branches, your chosen methodology, so that might be quite broad, qualitative or quantitative, or it might be a little bit more niche, like a case-based methodology, for example. But that branch has to be connected to something else, i.e., the trunk of the tree, and that's our epistemology, which we'll go on to a little bit. And then we have the that root, sorry, the trunk is connected to the roots of the tree, which is your ontology. So both the roots and the trunk of the tree is your researcher position, and without that, you wouldn't be able to support your method, i.e., branch, and you definitely wouldn't support your leaf. Now, when we talk about researcher position today, we're going to talk about the three key ones that people often fall into and why this is important. Because if you are one type of researcher position, often that means there's only certain select types of instruments and methodologies that you can use, um, because they wouldn't align to the ontological and epistemological stunts. And those are those scary words again, Sharon.

Sharon:

Yeah. I love this, I love this um metaphor that you have around the tree. Because what we often find, and I'm sure when I was doing my undergraduate um dissertation and just gathering data and so on, we just jump straight to those leaves. We just jumped straight to the method. This is what we're gonna do to get this data, um, without even thinking that there might be branches and and um a trunk and roots. And and I think that's a when we talk to students about this topic, it is uh, well, I want to do this, I want to gather this data. Um, so they're thinking leaf rather than thinking grounding themselves in the in the root.

Anthony :

Yeah, and we've got we've got to step back, and I think that's a nice place to start now, isn't it, Sharon? This idea of our roots as a researcher, and and that's what we might hear of ontology or our ontological stance. Um so ontology, the kind of simplest way to explain this. It's ontology is kind of this what is reality? That's the question. What's the nature of reality? So people typically fall into two broad categories here. You have one camp that believe that basically everybody is subjected to the same laws of nature, um, and that any question that you ask, you may not find out the answer, but you know that there's one right answer. There's what we call one truth. Okay, so there are people out there who believe um that yet, any question I ask, you know, I may have to go through multiple questions to get there, but fundamentally, there is one definitive right answer, and that group is some who we call positivism. So you might have heard this term positivism. So positivistic people are people who believe there is one truth, effectively. The other camp believe that okay, well, while these laws and systems might be in play to everybody, doesn't necessarily mean everybody is subjected to it in the same way. So this idea that people experience nature and reality in their own individual way, and therefore there might be multiple right answers to a particular question, and that's what we call um subjectivity, which kind of brings into interpretivism, which is the other side of that queen. Now I'll come on to the third one a little bit later after we've just discussed our epistemology, um, but that's effectively what an ontological stance is. You either believe that reality is yes or a no, or you're kind of an indefinite demand so, or you believe that's too simplistic, there are multiple realities.

Sharon:

Yeah, I think that's a really nice summary of it there. Um and I think it is important to realize maybe that you can move between these depending on what you're studying. So, like I say, my background was in science. If you're counting bacteria in food samples, you're you're looking at you're sitting within that positive, there is one answer. However, when I moved into education, it's so much broader than that. So it it depends on on what you want to find out. You may find yourself moving between these different things. But when you're looking at your own research, you will generally, as Tony mentioned, we'll talk about it more later, but we'll generally find yourself sitting within one of those camps.

Anthony :

Yeah, and I think discipline sometimes plays a big role in that. So just like yourself, Sharon, I did a lot of um kind of science kind of based research, and I was very much a positivist um back then. You know, I would prefer numbers, preferred data, you know, writing to test for things. And then as I progressed through my research career and started dealing more with people rather than rocks and samples and stuff, um, then I started to appreciate, oh, there is another side to the coin. And obviously that led me to my other one, which I'll talk about later on, uh where I sit now. Um, but yeah, and some people are naturally, will always stay, you know, in one camp. Um you don't necessarily need to move between them. But yeah, these things are relatively fluid, but it will sometimes again, some people I think the challenge is is let's say, for example, you are a positivistic person, so you believe there is one only one truth, and yet your discipline is one that believes there are multiple realities. So, you know, typically think some of the social sciencey ones, sometimes that can be quite a harder thing to kind of adapt, but it's it's important to know where you sit because I say that informs our epistemological stance. So so epistemology is the trunk of our tree. Now, ontology and epistemology go hand in hand. So if ontology is what is reality, epistemology is the question of well, how do we measure that reality, or how do we how do we know what knowledge is? So those people who believe there are only one truth, they are positivistic people, and they go, okay, well, if there's only one truth, I can test for that, I can observe the world, I can run experiments, I can test for it, I can do some statistics, and that's gonna give me uh, you know, an x equals y. That's gonna give me a definitive answer. So, positivistic people, their epistemological stance would be, well, I can test for that, I can observe it, I can test for it. And that's how I know that that exists because I'm gonna get a definitive answer. Those who are subjective and are in interpretivism, um, their epistemological stance would be, well, if I feel that everybody is subjected to these laws of nature in different ways and they observe the world in their own way, well, I need to investigate that. I need to talk to those people, I need to experience their experiences to try and gather that data to see what are those right answers for that particular one. So, this the one you might hear is say positivism is objective, whereas interpretivism is subjective, and that's the kind of the key difference there. One is very what we say traditionally science-based one, you know, the old school way of I can do an experiment, I'll get a yes or a no. Qualitative is more there could be multiple truths, I've got to go explore them. That's kind of the way that I like to describe um epistemologies.

Sharon:

I think that's a really nice summary of that um of that trunk of that tree there, Tony. And you said epistemological and epistemological in I can't say it now. It's hard, isn't it? Epistemology. You said them perfectly, which I just didn't. So, yeah, absolutely. Um it is, and you can see how well the way that you view your world, the ontology links so nicely with how you're gonna measure or how you're gonna relate or find out about that world, they're just so integrally linked, if that's a word. Um they they're just one is built from the other. And if you if you start off by being you if your understanding is you can find the world by um the world has this one one truth, and then you try and find it using an interpretive route, it it it it doesn't tie together and similar. So they they they just need to match each other.

Anthony :

And this is why it's so important we talk about that tree analogy, isn't it, Sharon? That you know, let's go with that idea. So you're a positivistic person, so you believe reality is is one truth. How do you know that? I can go and test for it, and yet you then went and did an interview which explored different people's views. That that tree just doesn't it doesn't make sense, it doesn't it doesn't flow. So the reason we have this ontological and epistemological stance is effectively if you fall into one of those two camps, those people who are positivistic tend to use quantitative methodologies. So your experiments, your very um close question surveys, for example, because that makes ontological and epistemological sense, because if you believe there's only one truth and you can test for it, you're going to need to use methods that can actually test for that, and vice versa, those who are of interpretivist paradigm, you would use qualitative instruments primarily. So for things like focus groups, because you get to explore those different views, interviews, for example, that makes sense. So again, you know, if you are somebody who said, Oh, I believe there are multiple realities, multiple truths, and then you just did one experiment that wouldn't align. So this is why it's so important. Again, we do see it where, as you mentioned at the very start there, Sharon, where some students just jump straight to the leaf, instrument, this is what I want to do. And yet when they write about this, how they got to this, it doesn't align to their ontological and epistological stents.

Sharon:

Yeah. And and then you start to get into a bit of trouble trying to explain why you've done something. And I think it is natural, isn't it, that you jump, you feel, oh, actually, I do want to do focus groups or something like that, or I want to collect this hard data. Um, but it's fine to think like that, but then actually you need to do those steps backwards so that you can justify it in something like a master's dissertation, something like that, where you need to justify why you're doing these things. It's it's fine to jump to the leaf, but then you need to do a bit of work to take a step back so that you can see that it is supported by the branches, by the trunk, by the roots. And if it isn't and it's not going to answer your research question, then maybe it's time to think again before you've actually gone on and done all of these things and gathered your data and then thought, oh, hang on, right, okay, this doesn't do what I want it to do.

Anthony :

And that's so important as well as Sharon Boutique. When you you dive into say your chosen method and your chosen instrument, you know, all those things have like procedures attached to them. And obviously, when you get to your analysis, you know, for example, if you're doing like an interview, um, you know, you might do thematic analysis, for example, because again, that's trying to collect different people's views to then form into a theme. That makes sense ontologically and epistemologically, why you would do that for an interview. But if you then had that interview data and you were still trying to pigeonhole that into one truth, i.e., you know, looking at it in a very quantitative way, it just falls apart, it doesn't work. So we have to make sure we're all following that through. Now, I alluded to my research position a little bit before. So, as I mentioned here, there are the two camps we've talked about positivism and interpretivism. Now, there is a third paradigm that exists, and that's a thing called pragmatism, and that's what I have been for the past, I would say, well, I finished well, I started my PhD in 2017, finished it in 2019. So, since 2017, I've been a pragmatist. So pragmatists kind of this is still a relatively newish paradigm. I think it came out more and more in the early 2000s. Um, uh Johnson and Obawinge were the kind of the key people here, who basically said research shouldn't really just be through the lens of one paradigm. There's often another side to the coin. So they kind of argued this idea of well, for some things, yeah, there is one right answer. For other things, there are multiple right answers, and quite often there's one in the same. So they kind of argued that people who look at the lens through a positivistic viewpoint, that's great for generalization, but it misses the nitty-gritty of people, and vice versa, those who just prefer subjectivity, this idea of qualitative, can often miss the broader picture of a population. So pragmatism is kind of going, well, I see the value in both, and this idea of a pragmatist is not bound by theory, they are free to move between the two based on their research question. Pragmatism is basically the what's the best tool available to answer this research question in depth. Now, when I did my PhD, this is something I really had to defend because pragmatism it is still relatively new, and there is the thought process of it's the easy way out, right? You know, this idea of oh, well, you're just picking whatever it is. And the problem with being a pragmatist is you have to be an expert in both paradigms in order to select the ones that you're doing. Um now, this only really comes into play, I would say, if you are somebody who, for your particular research topic, you feel it's really important that you explore both the generalization and you want some hard data, but you also need that nitty-gritty of the people. So when you're doing something like a sequential mixed methods one. So, for example, for my PhD, I had um some hard data from like drone technology, so like really hard data from models, and I had a large-scale survey through two universities with both staff and students to get that generalization. So I had that data, but that didn't tell the full story because I had to go into more depth, hence my use of interviews, focus groups, um, and observations to get that. What I would argue is a full picture of a research question. Um, so I say not many students will be in the position to be a pragmatist. Some people might, particularly if you listen to this and you're, you know, you're doing an M res um or say you're you're doing a PhD, Dprof, an ed D, you might be in the position to become um a pragmatist.

Sharon:

Yeah, and I think that's a really important point. And again, as as you said, it really Very much depends on your research question and how that is going to be best answered. So that's the place where you often start is this is what I want to know. How am I going to get the answers that I want? And if it does involve that actually you do want that bigger picture, but also you want that detail of how people perceive it, for example, then pragmatism is the root. But as you say, it can be tricky to defend at times. So and you have to become a master of everything.

Anthony :

Yeah. And that's the challenge of pragmatism, I say. But for most students, you're going to fall into one of the two camps. But yeah, if you are somebody who is a pragmatist, um, it's not if you just listen to that and you've gone, oh great, that's an easy way out. It's it's not you've gotta you've got to be a master of both. Um, and that does take time. The only reason I became a um a pragmatist is because I mentioned there at the start, my previous research, both uh undergrad and masters, was positivistic, and then I worked for a couple of years as a research assistant doing a lot of really, really heavy qualitative things with people, and that's when it kind of dawned on me that actually both of them have their real values. So I've spent the best part of you know what, 10 or so years using both methods to then become a pragmatist and and have that knowledge of one, so um, yeah, it's it's important, and you know, and and within these, they're just the key three ones. Um some people might be like, Oh, what what's constructivism? I've heard of this, um, so they all sit under the power the paradigm of interpretivism, and again, positivism has their own little individual ones, which you can break down even further. Um so these are the key three camps, and even within them, there are certain individual things. So you can really there is lots of them, but the key ones for most students it's I'm a positivistic person, so do I believe this one truth and then I can test for it? Are you an intervativistic person? I.e. multiple realities, I can explore that through interviews and talking to them. Or are you a pragmatist who goes, actually, I need to use a bit of both, and what's the right method to answer that particular question?

Sharon:

I think one thing to think of, just if you if you do tend towards, or your discipline, your research question tends towards interpretivism, is you might be thinking, well, actually, that that feels a bit sort of wishy-washy, doesn't it? One important part of interpretivism is about thinking about where you stand in something. So I'm gonna chuck in another long word here. Um, well, it's not quite as long, but reflexivity as well. Because if we said that we understand that there's lots of lots of different viewpoints, people are coming at things with different perspectives. We also have to acknowledge that our own perspective may have um an impact on what we're researching. So reflexivity is also something that you might need to think about if you're doing um some sort of interpretivism as your research. And reflexivity is just acknowledging and thinking critically, and the important word there is critically, about how your own background, your own beliefs, your own experience might influence how you are interpreting the data. And it's fine because that will happen. We can't, we're not robots, we can't split ourselves completely from our data, but it's usually worth um, and often in a dissertation, if you're doing this sort of research, there will be a small section where you might be encouraged to talk about your again, researcher position, but from a personal viewpoint. So when I moved to interpretivism and I did my D, I had to, I couldn't just jump into um analysing interviews straight away. I had to think about what my aspects were, even things like why I'd chosen that question, what my background, my my history, my educational history, uh how that might have impacted how I was interpreting the students' um interviews that I was analysing at the time. So that's another thing to throw in there. It's a sort of related to researcher position, but not necessarily part of that standard structure of the big tree, or it might, I mean, it's sort of part of it really, but maybe maybe a fruit hanging from it, I don't know. Um, so that's certainly something to think about where you sit as a person in your own experiences and how they might impact on your research and the way that you do it.

Anthony :

I think it's so important, Sharon Muse, particularly if you are using uh any of those qualitative paradigms, is that yeah, because again, we mentioned that it's subjectivity, and that's the key difference, really. If you're doing an experiment, you are removed from it, you're objective, hence positivism. Yeah, this idea of interpretation being subjective, everybody views the world differently. That includes you as a researcher, you view the world differently. So, yeah, that is uh an absolute fundamental part, and it's something that we would encourage all students to do it, all parts um of their research is to have that reflexive element um to it all. So, yeah, so I say it's complicated, you know, it it's yeah, it's something that takes many years to fully master, but um hopefully in this episode it's giving you a bit of a flavor of the key overviews of what we're looking for. And again, for most cheaters, I would say for undergrad and master's level, it's having an awareness of what are you doing and why are you doing it, and do those methodologies of instruments do they align to your research position? So we have a nice little video on our Moodle. Uh, if you go to our Moodle tile and go to the qualitative methodology section, there is um a little video with some little cute animals um talking about um this uh and using the idea of the tree. Uh, and you'll also find some of the little bits and bobs in there as well. But hopefully that's been useful um today.

Sharon:

Even if it's just giving you an idea of how to set your ontology and epistemology difficult enough in themselves, yeah.

Anthony :

I mean, I find I wrote it down three times here in my notes, um, and I still nearly messed it up, so yeah, um they're because they are really big scary words, but once you kind of mass that and you know it, because again, I've had students before where they're like, Oh, I just quite simple, it doesn't sound simple, but it is simple. It's like, yeah, and then again, that makes you think about, and as I said at the very start, you know, where you kind of sit. So people who are positivistic, and this is like in general life now, away from research, you know, you're often looking for that one answer. It's kind of black and white, it's a yes and a no. Those people who are more subjective are kind of like oh, okay, well, that person said that, but have they said that because of their background, or you know, because of how they've grown up and potentially more inquisitive, but that's the nature of subjective, or am I reacting to that information because of my own viewpoints on that rather than it being objective? And it's really important, I think, that when you do that, and again, for some students, things a lot of things start making sense of oh right, yeah. So actually, I really am a subjective person, and and that actually bleeds into everything that I do, you know, and and that kind of helps you navigate the world. So um it's it's fascinating. And as we said there, Sharon, isn't it? You know, you don't just lock in and then that's it for the rest of your life. People some people will, but most people will move around depending on where they are in their in their life, their career, or their particular research question, you know. Particularly for me, coming from that positivistic mindset, and my very first kind of project is um was a research assistant, was to interview women and how they were disadvantaged in the research excellence framework. So going from a very positivistic to super qualitative, you know, I had to get out of that mindset of I'm not looking for one truth here, I'm looking for multiple things which can be combined, and and that can be a challenge to pull yourself away from that mindset, particularly if you are jumping into a new one. Um but I what I would encourage finally is you know if you are somebody who is locked into a particular one, sorry, positivism or interpretivism, and the question that you've been asked to explore could potentially be explored through the other paradigm, sometimes that could be a really useful activity to do, whether it is for your thesis or just a kind of a thought exercise about how I would tackle this through you know the other paradigm, can often really open up different ways of thinking about things and and don't get so pigeonholed because again, as a pragmatist, I would say my biggest strength is I'm not pigeonholed. And and some established researchers get so caught up in their own paradigm that they don't have any time for any of the others. And I would really encourage people to, particularly if you are early on in your research career, to explore those different paradigms to see their strengths rather than the traditional academic debate, which is that one's better than that one. And that's yeah, well, we it actually it's called the paradigm wars, it's it's a thing. So it sounds like Star Wars, isn't it?

Sharon:

But no, yeah, not not quite as interesting as Star Wars, but it does mean that a lot of people get to publish a lot of papers arguing their side, and then there's the counter-argument, and it's been going on for years, hasn't it?

Anthony :

But yeah, thank you, Sharon, for for joining me today. And yeah, um, hopefully that's kind of demystified those big scary words a little bit. Um, but yeah, listen out at the end we have a little bit of a advert about how we as a team um can help you. But yeah, um thank you for joining Sharon and we'll see everybody on the next one. Yeah, bye-bye.

Speaker:

Thank you very much. Bye. Hi there. If you're a University of Chester student, here are the ways you can access support from your academic skills team.

Anthony :

On our Moodle pages, we've got lots of interactive resources for you to use. On our literacies Moodle page, you'll find help with a range of skills from academic rating to revision. On our Maths and Statistics Moodle pages, you'll find help with different statistical tests, calculations, and formulas.

Speaker:

You can also use our Feed Forward Email Assistance service. You can send 750 words, which is around three paragraphs, of your work, to ask at chester.ac.uk and we'll respond within three working days with generic and developmental advice on aspects such as paragraph structure, criticality and referencing.

Anthony :

You can also book a one-to-one with the Academic Skills Advisor via our Moodle pages. These appointments typically last 30 minutes and are available online and in person. You're able to see the campuses around by looking at our booking scheduler. You can send across an extract of your work for us to look at in preparation for the one-to-one, or you can book a one-to-one to discuss a generic skill such as referencing or critical thinking.

Speaker:

If you and a group of your course mates are struggling with the same academic skill, you can book an Ask Together session by emailing ask at chester.ac.uk with details of your availability, how many people are in your group, what skills you want to cover, and where you'd like the session to take place.

Anthony :

You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook using the handle at skillsuac, where we post practical tips on a range of academic skills, and it's also a great way to see what the team are up to.

Speaker:

And of course, you've got the skills pod. If you have a topic that you'd like us to cover, or you'd like to be involved with our podcast, please email ask at testom.ac. Ask supporting your sister.