Abstract
Positivism is a dominant ideology in social sciences research. It assumes that the social world is an objectively and externally existing object. Therefore, patterns of social world are waiting for us as researchers to discover, predict, and even control. In order to achieve these, positivists suggest we investigate the social world applying scientific methods, which are value-free, objective, and with structured strategies and procedures of inquires similar to those applied in natural sciences. By using scientific methods, positivists believe that researchers can discover the social world and find out the truth. In social sciences, due to the long-term ideology emphasizing the statistical measurements in empirical studies, quantitative research methods have long been favored.
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Tsang, K.K., Liu, D., Hong, Y. (2019). Introduction: Qualitative Research Methods in Empirical Social Sciences Studies—Young Scholars’ Perspectives and Experiences. In: Tsang, K., Liu, D., Hong, Y. (eds) Challenges and Opportunities in Qualitative Research. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5811-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5811-1_1
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