S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

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3. Instrumentation and instrumental techniques that bring the laws of the paradigm to bear on the real world; 4. General metaphysical principles that guide work within the paradigm; 5. General methodological prescriptions about how to conduct work within the paradigm. Paradigms guide a researcher in their philosophical assumptions about their research and in their selection of the tools, instruments, participants and methods used in the study (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). Hence, a paradigm implies a pattern, structure, framework or system of scientific and academic ideas, values and assumptions (Olsen, Lodwick & Dunlap, 1992). Researchers in the interpretivist paradigm believe that there are multiple realities (Hudson & Ozanne, 1988) and not one objective, universal reality. Interpretivists assert that ‘truth’ is a relative concept, dependent on the individual’s own social construction of reality (Searle, 1995) and ‘[recognise] the importance of the subjective human creation of meaning, but [do not] reject outright some notion of objectivity. Pluralism, not relativism, is stressed with focus on the circular dynamic tension of subject and object’ (Miller & Crabtree, 1999, p. 10). With reference to Table 4.1, this study was conceptualised within an interpretive paradigm. ‘Interpretivism’ does not enjoy a uniformly agreed and settled meaning . Erickson (1986) used it as an umbrella term for ‘the whole family of approaches to participant observational research’ (p. 119). Denzin and Lincoln (2005) subsumed interpretivism under the paradigm of qualitative research. Schwandt (1998, 2000) made a distinction between ‘interpretivism’ and ‘constructivism’, claiming that they differ in their