Notes About and Connections to Creswell Chapter 1

• Three types of research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods.
• Research design: the plan or proposal to conduct research (is this proposal term the same as the proposal that is my final project?)
• Worldview: basic set of beliefs that guide action (epistemologies, ontologies, broadly conceived research methodologies)
• Four worldviews: postpositivists, social constructivist, advocacy/participatory, pragmatic
• Strategies of inquiry: types of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods designs or models that provide specific direction for procedures in a research design (approaches to inquiry, research methodologies)
• Quantitative strategies: survey research, experimental research
• Qualitative strategies: ethnography, grounded theory, case studies, phenomenological research, narrative research
• Mixed Methods strategies: sequential mixed methods, concurrent mixed methods, transformative mixed methods

Upon reviewing the different worldviews, I think I lean more toward the social constructivist worldview. This makes sense to me because I have degrees in both English and American Studies. Social constructivists “hold assumptions that individuals seek understanding of the world in which they live and work” and “The researcher’s intent is to make sense of (or interpret) the meanings others have about the world. Rather than starting with a theory (as in postpostivism), inquirers generate or inductively develop a theory or pattern of meaning” (8). Creswell states that this worldview is “typically seen as an approach to qualitative research” (8). Furthermore, Creswell states, “Qualitative research is exploratory and is useful when the researcher does not know the important variables to examine” (18). Therefore, I believe I am more interested in the qualitative design of research and have a constructivist worldview; I want to observe and interview my subjects during my research in order to make meaning of what I observe.

*The following comment has been added after the original note. Now that I have spent a few weeks finding research articles and forming a research question, I am even more convinced that my worldview is that of social constructivist.