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Research Methodology : Research Project

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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

1. RESEARCH PARADIGM

Stating a knowledge claim means that researchers start a project with certain assumptions about how they will learn and what they will learn during their enquiry. These claims might be called as paradigms (Lincoln & Guba, 2000; Mertens, 1998); philosophical assumptions, epistemologies, and ontologies (Crotty, 1998); or broadly conceived research methodologies (Neuman, 2000). Philosophically, researchers make claims about what is knowledge (ontology), how we know it (epistemology), what values go into it (axiology), how we write about it (rhetoric), and the processes for studying it (methodology) (Creswell, 1994).

The researcher brings to the choice of a research design assumptions about the knowledge in claims. In addition, operating at more applied level are strategires of inquiry or traditions of inquiry (Creswell, 1998) or methodologies (Mertens, 1998) that provide specific direction of procedures in research design.

QUANTITATIVE QUALITATIVE MIXED METHODS
1.Experimental designs Narratives Sequential
2.Non-experimental designs such as surveys Phenomenologies Concurrent Ethnographies Transformative Grounded theory Case studies

Table: Alternative stratagies of inquiry

2. APPROACHES TO RESEARCH

This section highlights the main aspects of Research design whereby research approaches and their associated methods are explored in depth.

2.1 Quantitative approach
A quantitative approach is generally applied in the testing or

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