MHR 405 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Participant Observation, Dependent And Independent Variables, Antipositivism

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Human Resources
• Course: MHR 405
• Professor: Robin Church

Document Summary

A theory is a general set of propositions that describes interrelationships among several concepts. They are formed for the purpose of predicting and explaining the world around us. A good theory should be clear and simple, elements must be logically consistent with each other, and it should provide value to the society. Includes the inductive (draws on personal experience to form a theory) and deductive (uses scientific methods to test the theory) stages. Positivism is a view held in quantitative research in which reality exists independent of the perceptions and interpretations of people. Interpretivism is the view held in qualitative studies that reality comes from shared meaning among people in a particular environment. This process includes forming hypotheses, defining and measuring constructs, and testing hypotheses. Hypotheses are statements making empirically testable declarations that certain variable and their corresponding measures are related in a specific way proposed by the theory.