Part of your problem is that the leaders of the movement towards metaphysical thinking (ontology and epistemology) about qualitative research were quite explicit in not connecting these issues to concrete methods for collecting and analyzing data. In particular, Yvonna Linclon and Egon Guba always insisted that the issues here involved what they called paradigms (such as post-positivism and constructivism) and not differences in method.

I myself have argued that an emphasis on ontology and epistemology is now a rather old-fashioned way of thinking about issues in science science research methodology. In 1985, when Lincoln and Guba wrote their book, Naturalistic Inquiry, that emphasis played an important role in justifying qualitative inquiry, but since then it has become increasingly problematic.

One major factor here has been the rise of mixed methods, which doesn't fit into the binary opposition of post-positivism and constructivism. Another has been the rise of alternative paradigms such as pragmatism and critical realism that go beyond Lincoln and Giba's version of paradigms. Finally, there is the problem that you seem to be having: thinking in terms of ontology and epistemology provides little guidance with regard to designing and conducting concrete research projects.

Here are links to one of my articles on this topic:

Article Pragmatism as a Paradigm for Social Research

 Dear Professor Morgan,

Thank you very much for your thought provoking suggestions. Thanks are also due for sending a copy of the article.

Regards,

Pranab

The answer is very much dependent on your own worldview. If you believe in an external truth that can be tested through rigour of qualitative methods, then you allign yourself as a positivist where knowledge about what we can is real and therefore can be captured.

If however you believe that only individual meaning exists: that is, nothing is real it is just what we (the individual) perceive it to be. This is postmodernism where knowledge is based on subjectivism.

The third possibility is social constructionism: that is, because we are all born into a cultural milleu we will see things from that culture as 'true'. Under this ontologcal position it is your values, norms and customs which determines knowledge. Such knowledge, nevertheless, is constructed as relative knowledge because other people from other cultures will have very different lknowledges and truths.  

The answer is very much dependent on your own worldview. If you believe in an external truth that can be tested through rigour of qualitative methods, then you allign yourself as a positivist where knowledge about what we can is real and therefore can be captured.

If however you believe that only individual meaning exists: that is, nothing is real it is just what we (the individual) perceive it to be. This is postmodernism where knowledge is based on subjectivism.

The third possibility is social constructionism: that is, because we are all born into a cultural milleu we will see things from that culture as 'true'. Under this ontologcal position it is your values, norms and customs which determines knowledge. Such knowledge, nevertheless, is constructed as relative knowledge because other people from other cultures will have very different lknowledges and truths.  

The answer is very much dependent on your own worldview. If you believe in an external truth that can be tested through rigour of qualitative methods, then you allign yourself as a positivist where knowledge about what we can is real and therefore can be captured.

If however you believe that only individual meaning exists: that is, nothing is real it is just what we (the individual) perceive it to be. This is postmodernism where knowledge is based on subjectivism.

The third possibility is social constructionism: that is, because we are all born into a cultural milleu we will see things from that culture as 'true'. Under this ontologcal position it is your values, norms and customs which determines knowledge. Such knowledge, nevertheless, is constructed as relative knowledge because other people from other cultures will have very different lknowledges and truths.  

Dialogic e.g. Anne Lane, Edward Demenchonok etc. combined with hermeneutic circle and completed with some systemic thinking like social structuralism (functionism). 

I always return to Norbert Wiener, Michel Foucault and Mikhail Bakhtin.

Only one approach is  always a disaster (except in narrow academic circles).

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/34323/1/34323.pdf

https://www.dur.ac.uk/chi/tasks/21/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/

http://asounder.org/resources/weiner_humanuse.pdf

Thanks.

Pranab,

Given that you have phrased your question here philosophically, that is in terms of an epistemology and ontology, I suggest that you need to consider a philosophical answer. The Hermeneutic philosophical tradition initiated by Heidegger to Gadamer and Ricoeur argues that understanding-in-practice or understanding-in-use is fundamental to being human both as mode of knowing (epistemological claim) and as existing (ontologically).

Have a look at Dreyfus ...

Regards,

Tony Wilson

Thank you very much.

I advocate social realist theory as an explanatory framework because it coerces researchers to consider actual variables that shape and influence human experiences. These variables include social structures, culture and human agency which, when combined, generate social events and in turn human experiences of them. As an ontological school, social realism highlights the distinct powers of these three variables. See below:

Article A social realist ontology for developing Afrocentric curricu...

Article Friends or foes? A theoretical approach towards constructivi...

Article From mechanist to critical realist interrogations of academi...

Article Social Realist Ontology for Analysing BRICS Educational Gove...