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Making connections: The relationship between epistemology and research methods

The relationship between epistemology and method is rarely articulated through our formal coursework education either at undergraduate or postgraduate level; certainly this is true in many psychology programmes. Nowhere during my formal education was the connection between epistemology and method clearly explained, indeed the entire notion of a philosophical foundation to research was missing. The Australian Psychological Accreditation Council (APAC) guidelines do not require the epistemological foundations of science to be explicated at either the undergraduate or postgraduate level. In fact the only reference to 'philosophy' in the 2005 documentation is a requirement for the " history and philosophy of psychology " (APAC, 2005, p.23) to be included somewhere during the undergraduate degree. The various research units I studied throughout my undergraduate and postgraduate education were all titled Research Methods (with or without various suffixes attached) which served to emphasise the focus onto the methods employed instead of the entire construction of the research process. It was only when I was struggling to write my PhD thesis that I realised that this gap in my knowledge and understanding existed and that I needed to rectify it before I continued with the writing. But in embarking on this journey I discovered as much about me as I did about how the methods I employed sat within a social constructionist worldview. In this paper I will describe why it is important to be explicit about the epistemological foundations of our work and how identifying our orientation can help frame our research design. I begin by outlining the constructionist view and differentiating this from the positivist stance. I do this for two reasons; first, to demonstrate the dominance of the positivist perspective in psychology students education and second, because I personally subscribe to a constructionist worldview and this influenced my choice of research topic, and the methodology I employed. Having done this I then demonstrate how this epistemological view shaped my study and was able to cast new light on the experience of undergraduate students that challenges the accepted knowledge on this topic. Epistemological Roots The basic contention of the constructionist argument is that reality is socially constructed by and between the persons who experience it (Gergen, 1999). It is a consequence of the context in which the action occurs and is shaped by the cultural, historical, political, and social norms that operate within that context and time: And that reality can be …