Something that I had noticed since I started my PhD is that they are doctorates of philosophy for a reason. Although only recently grasped exactly why. At all levels of education up to this point work is assessed on somebody else's criteria. In a PhD you must establish the criteria by which you want your PhD to be assessed on. It is therefore essential to establish its internal logic and ensure that all of the study is consistent to this.
Defining truth and attitude towards gaining knowledge is a fundamental aspect of the internal logic of a PhD. For example if you take a positivist, scientific approach your attitude to knowledge gathering is that you are an impartial observer. In a social science context this would mean that questionnaires would need to be designed carefully so as not to influence the participants of a survey. It is as if the researcher is looking into activity taking place within a goldfish bowl conducting experiments to find out what is happening in there taking care not to disrupt or influence anything taking place in there.
I have decided not to take a positivist approach. This is for many different reasons. I am investigating potential cost savings and efficiency improvements within part of the health and social care system. At first glance a positivist approach might seem appropriate as this is primarily concerned with assessing the potential financial impact of new approaches. However because I am looking at this from a systems thinking perspective this would be problematic. To estimate the potential impact of a new approach it is necessary to create a model. Taking a whole systems approach there is an inevitable amount of complexity due to the interconnected nature of everything. This would make modelling from a positivist approach challenging as from this perspective this model would claim to closely resemble real life systems. This would be a huge complex undertaking beyond the scale and scope of a PhD project. In response to this I could decide to do a cost effectiveness study on one part of the system and ignore the wider system implications. However my perspective is that finding cost savings in one part of the system is almost pointless as this may simply transfer costs into a different part of the system.
A solution to the challenge of whole system modelling is not to take a positivist approach. In this context models become conceptual rather than real. This makes testing ideas within models much simpler as there is no claim that these models are accurate reflections of reality. Within this my approach will be strongly influenced by Peter Checkland, Geoffrey Vickers and other advocates of soft systems thinking who argue that human systems are different. From this perspective within any form of social science research it is not possible for the researcher to impartially observe as the very process of their research activities will inevitably influence participants. An illustration of this is the Hawthorne effect where individuals improve an aspect of their behaviour in response to their awareness of being observed
A post positivist perspective on research is that rather than thinking of the observer as being outside of a goldfish bowl looking in is more like thinking of the researcher as being inside the goldfish bowl observing changes taking place around them. From this perspective the researcher must accept that everything that they do will influence the subjects being observed. From this perspective action research methodology is appropriate to gather data to inform models. I will use action research approaches including soft systems methodology and appreciative enquiry within my study.
The stance taken towards epistemology and ontology throws up many different questions including what methodologies are valid or appropriate. There are also paradigm debates, with some authors suggestion that some methodologies are incompatible with some methodologies.
Postmodernism is an approach that interests me. It may include some relevance to assessing the current state of the NHS. It also provides insights that appeal to my sense of humour. I have however concluded that it too relativistic as the central philosophy for my study. I have concluded that even if I accept that my epistemology is relative, to give my research meaning I must accept or at least assume that there is a reality, even if it may be impossible to fully understand or measure it. For this reason I plan to focus my research from a critical realist perspective.
These links provide additional insights into the importance of having a clear epistemology and ontology in a PhD
In essence if you don't clearly set up the perspective of the research how can anyone effectively assess if it has been successfully carried out.
