Research Philosophy :: Ontology, Epistemology

Research philosophy, refers to the development of intimacy espouse by the enquiryers in their research (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009). In other words, it is the conjecture that used to direct the researcher for conducting the procedure of research excogitate, research strategy, questionnaire design and sampling (Malhotra, 2009). It is very important to have a clear instinct of the research philosophy so that we could examine the assumptions about the way we control the world, which are contained in the research philosophy we choose, knowing that whether they are steal or not (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009). According to Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2009), three major ways of intellection about research philosophy are examined ontology, epistemology and axiology. Each of them carries significant differences which go forth have an impact on the way we consider the research procedures. Ontology, is touch with nature of humanity, while epistemology concerns what constitutes acceptable knowledge in a field of study and axiology studies judgements about value (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009, p110, p112, p116). This study is intent on creating rough facts from objective evaluations which are made by the subjects. Therefore, epistemology will be chosen for this study as the way of thinking about the research philosophy.More specifically, epistemology also contains three philosophical positions positivism, realism and interpretivism (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009). Positivism location usually supports investigating or studying an observable cordial reality and the final production could be law-like generalisations similar to those produced by the physical and innate(p) scientists (Remenyi et al. cited in Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009, p113). It is effective to generate a research strategy to foregather the creditable data which comes from observable reality therefore contributing to ontogeny hypotheses (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009). In this study, we aim at exploring the creditable and measurable results from individuals in invest to understand the influence of surprise on viral marketing via social media in perspectives of message characteristics. Thus, the philosophy of positivism will be adopted in this study for collecting creditable data from the subjects to produce some law-like generalisations. However, it is always difficult to decide whether interpretivism should be applied to conduct a deeper analysis relating to subjects attitude for the sake of enhancing the precision. More complicated, such a predicament would often lead to the reflection of realism, which is divided into direct realism and scathing realism (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009).