Reading focus
Syllabus: How Can We Study Experience and Meaning?
Use the contrasting examples to connect a question to a view of knowledge. Treat the categories as propositions to examine.
Why you’re reading it. Recognize commitments that shape a study before judging its procedures.
A question to consider. How would a study of students feeling excluded differ if it aimed to describe experience, examine institutional language or support collective change?
Why this reading
The same interview can serve different kinds of inquiry. Ponterotto makes assumptions about reality, knowledge and values visible, then examines their implications for research practice.
Before you read
Ontology concerns what exists; epistemology concerns how knowledge is possible. Axiology concerns values. A paradigm connects such commitments; a data-collection technique alone does not identify it.
Read for
- Compare the research questions and researcher–participant relationships in the contrasting examples.
- Examine the difficulty of placing consensual qualitative research and grounded theory within fixed categories.
Consider afterwards
- Two researchers interpret the same account differently. What would each need to explain before you could evaluate the disagreement?
Editorial context
This is a 2005 conceptual map rooted in counseling psychology. Its categories simplify diverse traditions, and its examples are illustrations, not universal rules. The author acknowledges disagreement and hybrid approaches; use the distinctions to interrogate decisions rather than assign researchers to boxes.