PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNING AND PHENOMENOLOGY APPROACH IN SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH

Abstract

This paper is based on literature review discuss the philosophical underpinning like epistemology and ontological frameworks of theoretical and philosophical perspectives. These are usually known and referred as paradigm in the field of research, that we simply identify them as a worldview or a set of assumptions about how things work. Paradigms are comprehensive framework of the beliefs, experiences and beliefs of numerous theories and research practices, which are extensively used in the research process. Basic questions like epistemology tries to answer that what is true or what does distinguish the authentic knowledge from the false and (inadequate) knowledge. This gives birth to basic questions that what is truth, and what counts the knowledge? What is the relationship amongst researcher and what is the already known? How do we come to know? Whereas ontology is oriented the nature of social realism and the things which exist, such as settings of their reality of relationships amongst the objects. The paper argues that phenomenological approach or strategy of inquiry is one of the best approaches in the qualitative research study.