Assumptions and Design Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Assumptions and Design - Essay Example The researcher’s basic beliefs or assumptions guide him/her about research methods, including the researcher’s ontological beliefs (beliefs about the nature of reality), epistemological beliefs (beliefs about what is possible to know), and axiological beliefs (beliefs about what is ethical and the role of values in research). Armour Peterson article employs qualitative design to study post homicide experience of family members of homicide victims (Armour, 2002). Qualitative research design, such as the one employed by Armour, is designed to riposte to questions regarding the intricate nature of occurrences with the aim of explaining, describing, and understanding the phenomena being researched (Creswell, 2003). The author beliefs that the relatives of homicide victims are an ignored lot and their post homicide experiences are molded by the social ambiance and the superiority of the government’s schema for justice. The choice of qualitative method is further supported by the author’s belief that attention to the needs of this population is limited, and hence the need for a qualitative method to generate knowledge and explain various aspects. Since only very few empirical researches exist about post homicide experiences of the family members of the homicide victims, the researcher had to record words and phrases and then look for meaning, concepts or theories. In addition, the post homicide experiences of each family vary greatl y; the researcher had to adopt a qualitative design since full and rich data is scarce and is not obtainable through quantitative studies. Data is best obtained through taking comprehensive notes, recording conversations and writing detailed observations. Mixed methods would combine both quantitative and qualitative approaches. In applying mixed methods, the philosophical assumption would be that findings about post homicide experiences could be generalized across all the families of the homicide victims. To