I have done a lot of reading regarding the philosophical grounds of critical realism and constructivism but I still cannot get my head around what the differences are and what difference would it make using one or the other in my thematic analysis.
My inductive coding is investigating the patterns from an interview amongst young black guys who have been stopped and searched from the police. I can see some themes evident in the analysis related to prejudice and mistrust in the police system.
I am now stuck trying to figure out whether a constructivism or critical realist stance would be appropriate and what practical difference would that imply when using one over the other.
I have never done qualitative research before and I am slowly learning all processes and doing a lot of reading hoping to do things in an appropriate manner.
thanks in advance for your help.
What difference would it make which philosophical stance you took? Would you alter your research question? Would you change your approach to either data collection or analysis? Would it affect your interpretation of the results?
If you have an advisor that insists you need a philosophical stance, then you might as well flip coin, because it isn't going to make any difference in how you do your research.
As I recall, Braun and Clarke (2006) said that their method would work across a variety of so-called paradigms.
The idea that one needs a philosophical stance to determine aspects of one's research design is actually quite old fashioned. It originated with Lincoln and Guba (1985), but that is well over a generation ago in terms of research methodology. That approach was successful its day, as an attack on naive realism (positivism), but the realization that it has no effect on how one does one's research is what has caused it to go out of fashion.
Have you investigated pragmatist as an alternative? That would focus directly on how you link your research questions with your research methods.
In addition to David's excellent answers, I would point out that you could consider whether you already took a philosophical stance by conducting your research in a particular way. For example, do you assume "young black guys" and "the police" exist independently of your investigation? Do you assume that you reconstruct them in a particular way as objects of your investigation? When you code inductively, what do you do in terms of social construction?
I fully agree with David that you do not need a philosophical stance to determine your research design. If you feel you need to explicate one, take the one you implicitly took already
Going with David, I suggest that follow a pragmatist approach. Epistemological questions are not the foremost to be answered, rather the narrative and the research questions that triggered the research should be answered well when you analyse your interviews
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As a complete stranger to formal philosophy, I would hazard a suggestion that you go where data leads you. That is simply being honest. Once the patterns in your data are clear, you might try to determine which school of epistemology is a good fit.
You mention "prejudice" and "mistrust." While some of these can be rooted in objective reality (e.g. we are "prejudiced" against drinking dirty water, it's safer not to "trust" a stranger) some of it can be due to errors of perception. You could therefore consider what some Indian schools of philosophy (Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Sankhya, Anekantavada etc.) have to say on the matter, more so because the reliability of the senses as valid sources of knowledge is a key issue here as I see it. A good place to start would be Will Durant's The story of philosophy for an overview of western philosophy and his overview of Indian philosophy in The story of civilization: Our Oriental heritage section on Indian philosophy. Then you can proceed to specialist books once you have determined the best option.
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