Research Paradigm

This review of the literature on Black women's mental health has three goals: 1) to describe the mental health issues, needs, and adaptive behaviors of Black women; 2) to discuss the research, intervention, and public policy efforts of mental health professionals and Black women's groups to address the multiple needs of this population; and 3) to identify effective strategies by which community psychologists can improve the mental health status of Black women through efforts to reduce their environmental stressors, to increase their resources and access to services, and to facilitate their empowerment in American society. The authors propose a number of recommendations to improve Black women's mental health, including changes in research paradigms, changes in education and training programs, and the development of culturally competent service delivery systems. A common aphorism about Black women is that they are triply disadvantaged due to their gender, their ethnicity, and their poverty. According to this view, Black women, as members of three low-status groups, represent the epitome of powerlessness in American society as compared to white middle-class males (Allen,

Research focusing on perceptual-cognitive skill in sport is abundant. However, the existing qualitative syntheses of this research lack the quantitative detail necessary to determine the magnitude of differences between groups of varying levels of skills, thereby limiting the theoretical and practical contribution of this body of literature. We present a meta-analytic review focusing on perceptual-cognitive skill in sport (N = 42 studies, 388 effect sizes) with the primary aim of quantifying expertise differences. Effects were calculated for a variety of dependent measures (i.e., response accuracy, response time, number of visual fixations, visual fixation duration, and quiet eye period) using point-biserial correlation. Results indicated that experts are better than nonexperts in picking up perceptual cues, as revealed by measures of response accuracy and response time. Systematic differences in visual search behaviors were also observed, with experts using fewer fixations of longer duration, including prolonged quiet eye periods, compared with nonexperts. Several factors (e.g., sport type, research paradigm employed, and stimulus presentation modality) significantly moderated the relationship between level of expertise and perceptual-cognitive skill. Practical and theoretical implications are presented and suggestions for empirical work are provided.

During the last 30 years, Higher Education (HE) has changed a lot. In the Northern part of Europe, until the 1960s, the traditional universities dominated with the ideal of an elitist university with freedom of academic research, which implied searching for the truth, and with an approach to education as presenting research. After the 1960s, with the students' rebellion, the university culture changed. At the traditional universities, students started to formulate demands, and became critical of the decline of the dominant research paradigm. At the managerial level, students had more influence on the boards, and they also applied pressure to develop new educational models such as the project- and problem-based learning (PBL) models that were implemented in Bremen University in Germany, Maastricht University in the Netherlands, Linköping University in Sweden, and Aalborg and Roskilde University in Denmark. During the 1970s and 1980s, the predominant picture was still that of traditional universities, but the university system expanded because of increased enrolment numbers (Carter et al., 2003) Often in history, unexpected partnerships occur: one of these partnerships was between the students' movements and industry. Many of the students' criticisms and alternatives, such as peer learning and problem-based and project-based learning, went hand in hand with demands from industry. For example, Aalborg University in Denmark was established in 1974 as a PBL university, due to lobbying from industry as well as being a result of the students' movement. This partnership was founded due to the fact that the largest faculty at Aalborg University was the Faculty of Engineering. It has been well known that there is a need for the ability to manage projects and co-operate, particularly in the technological field

The highest ranked U.S. business schools value, almost exclusively, publications in academic journals deemed to be "A-level" and high quantities of SSCI citations. But the so-called A-level journals, which typically are said to be five in number or less, publish predominantly empirical tests of economics-based models using large, archival data sets. Motivating researchers to publish papers that are situated only in these journals and that gather high quantities of SSCI citations, which are more likely if the publications are in mainstream topic areas, reduces topic, discipline, and research method diversity. The loss of diversity is costly to the schools themselves, the academy and, indeed, society. The narrow focus of the U.S. business schools provides a great opportunity for business schools in Europe and other parts of the world to take a leadership position in many important research areas. But that opportunity will be lost if those schools try to emulate the U.S. business school model.

The globalization of the marketplace and how this process is shaping the cultural characteristics of people around the world is arguably the most critical issue facing international marketing managers today. Powerful forces such as capitalism, global transport, communications, marketing and advertising, and transnational cosmopolitanism are interacting to dissolve the boundaries across national cultures and economies and in the eyes of some, accelerating the emergence of a homogeneous global consumer culture. The conventional method of using countries as the cultural unit of analysis or as a basis for market segmentation, is increasingly ill-advised, given that most of the world's countries are already multicultural and growing ever more so, and even within relatively homogeneous nations, individuals vary substantially in the extent to which they identify with, adhere to, and practice cultural norms. Many researchers argue that increasing globalization is reducing the homogeneity of consumer behaviors within countries, while increasing communalities across countries. Despite the importance of and widespread sociological discourse on this topic, (1) a scarcity of studies exists that have simultaneously considered both global and local cultural influences on consumer behavior, and (2) a scale for measuring how individuals acquire and become a part of this emerging global consumer culture is lacking. This article focuses on the development and validation of a multidimensional scale for the measurement of acculturation to global consumer culture, and is part of a larger international study examining the complex interaction and contextual nature of local and global cultural influences on consumer behavior. The article concludes with a proposed research paradigm intended to model such phenomena.

Due to the heritage and history of operations management, its research methodologies have been confined mainly to that of quantitative modeling and, on occasion, statistical analysis. The field has been changing dramatically in recent years. Firms now face numerous worldwide competitive challenges. many of which require major improvements in the operations function. Yet, the research methodologies in operations have largely remained stagnant. The paradigm on which these methodologies are based, while useful, limits the kinds of questions researchers can address.

Research methodology has recently been reduced to using research methods and techniques that are perceived only as ready-to-use tools. Paradigmatic issues become of secondary importance and left unsaid in research work or replaced by a multi-paradigm approach characterized by pluralist ontology and epistemology. The paradigm consists of assumptions and fundamental beliefs and represents a worldview that defines the nature of the world. It helps to justify the use of selected methods and techniques. The article aims to present the social constructionism paradigm and its application in old age and aging research.

The aim of this research is to consider an analysis through case studies on how knowledge sharing may be successfully implemented. The study will clarify a conceptualisation that provides a new understanding of the relationship between unemployed graduates and the human capital concept. The cases adopted web documentation for the research technique, and an interpretive approach was used as the research paradigm. Two online recruitment agency sites were analysed through qualitative analysis. The connections show how knowledge sharing can be used as a medium to help unemployed graduates to get jobs through online recruitment agencies. High quality candidates must have good soft skills, problem-solving skills and employable value added skills to get the best jobs. The findings will be expressed as qualitative results from the two online recruitment agencies researched as the case studies for the paper. From these case studies, the findings will contribute to the ongoing study on how to implement knowledge sharing among undergraduates after they finished their studies.

As a research paradigm, pattern analysis has been shown to be an effective tool for analyzing complex game situations in both chess and go. We extend the prior pattern analysis research in chess to the domain of shogi. Shogi is computationally more complex than chess and should realize greater benefits than the chess domain from pattern recognition and pattern exploitation research. The IAM program, which has accurately predicted up to 28% of the moves for a specific chess player, is redesigned to operate in the domain of shogi. Results similar to those achieved for the domain of chess are achieved in shogi.

INTRODUCTION education as his starting point. But he then goes on to argue forcefully that the methods of the sciences and the humanities cannot be seen as everywhere separate and complementary. In fact, at a deeper level, Keeves argues, the same metaphysical problems face research using the methods of the humanities or the methods of the sciences in educational research and indeed in research in general. He takes us through a maze of arguments in which Habermas, Popper, and Quine prominently appear to show that the valuational and the factual and the intentional, the metaphysical and the physical, the theoretical and the empirical are not everywhere distinct and thus that Hus4n's analysis must ultimately be flawed. However, like Hus4n, he concludes that in educational research a thousand flowers must be let to bloom.

The current debate about quantitative and quahtative methods focuses on whether there is a necessary connection between method-type and research paradigm that makes the &fferent approaches mcompahble. This paper argues that part of the ~i onnection is rhetorical. Quanktatwe methods express the ssumptwns of a posltwlst paradigm whzch holds that behavior /. can be explained through objective facts. Design and mstrumenta-~--kon p_ersuade by shozvmg how bias and error are eliminated. ~Quahtahve~nethods express the assu,~nphons~of a /~henomenol-~ogi-I cal para&gm that there are mulhple realities that are socially '~ defined. Rich descnphon persuades by showing that the researcher was immersed m the setting an~l ~wm~. the reader enoueh detad l~to 'make sense" of the sztuahon. Whde rhetorically_different, ?"the results of---~the tw~dologzes can be"co~Ipleme'~Jary. [Examples are drawn from tzvo studies using different ~, methodologies to study the same problem.

Since initially writing on thematic analysis in 2006, the popularity of the method we outlined has exploded, the variety of TA approaches have expanded, and, not least, our thinking has developed and shifted. In this reflexive commentary, we look back at some of the unspoken assumptions that informed how we wrote our 2006 paper. We connect some of these un-identified assumptions, and developments in the method over the years, with some conceptual mismatches and confusions we see in published TA studies. In order to facilitate better TA practice, we reflect on how our thinking has evolved – and in some cases sedimented – since the publication of our 2006 paper, and clarify and revise some of the ways we phrased or conceptualised TA, and the elements of, and processes around, a method we now prefer to call reflexive TA.

Qualitative research aims to address questions concerned with developing an understanding of the meaning and experience dimensions of humans' lives and social worlds. Central to good qualitative research is whether the research participants' subjective meanings, actions and social contexts, as understood by them, are illuminated. This paper aims to provide beginning researchers, and those unfamiliar with qualitative research, with an orientation to the principles that inform the evaluation of the design, conduct, findings and interpretation of qualitative research. It orients the reader to two philosophical perspectives, the interpretive and critical research paradigms, which underpin both the qualitative research methodologies most often used in mental health research, and how qualitative research is evaluated. Criteria for evaluating quality are interconnected with standards for ethics in qualitative research. They include principles for good practice in the conduct of qualitative research, and for trustworthiness in the interpretation of qualitative data. The paper reviews these criteria, and discusses how they may be used to evaluate qualitative research presented in research reports. These principles also offer some guidance about the conduct of sound qualitative research for the beginner qualitative researcher.

Descriptive models of social response attempt to identify the conceptual dimensions necessary to define and distinguish various types of influence. Building on previous approaches, the authors propose a new response model and demonstrate that a minimum of 4 dimensions is necessary to adequately provide for such influence phenomena as conformity, minority influence, compliance, contagion, independence, and anticonformity in a single model. In addition, the proposed model suggests 5 potential types of response that have not been previously identified. These new types suggest directions for future research and theoretical development. Selected empirical evidence is reviewed in support of the validity and integrative power of the proposed model.

There have always been theoretical frameworks or paradigmatic changes in education over the centuries. Some have been advantageous, others detrimental and some merely served their temporary social and cultural change, limiting their evolution to a specific era or developmental goal or educational cult. However, this transformation is evident. This article shows that the creation of a new paradigm in education is merely a part of an on-going development factor of change which can lead to good or bad. The potential results are forthcoming, only due to future meta-theory constructs based on their foundations, methods, form, utility and their eventual sociological development and benefit to mankind.

Article reprinted in: Madill, A., & Gough, B. (2016). Qualitative research and its place in psychological science. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed.), Methodological issues and strategies in clinical research (4th ed., pp. 437–458). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14805-028

In discussing the place of diverse qualitative research within psychological science, the authors highlight the potential permeability of the quantitative-qualitative boundary and identify different ways of increasing communication between researchers specializing in different methods. Explicating diversity within qualitative research is facilitated, initially, through documenting the range of qualitative data collection and analytic methods available. The authors then consider the notion of paradigmatic frame and review debates on the current and future positioning of qualitative research within psychological science. In so doing, the authors argue that the different ways in which the concept of paradigm can be interpreted allow them to challenge the idea that diverse research paradigms are prima facie incommensurate. Further, reviewing the ways in which proponents of qualitative research are seeking to reconfigure the links between paradigms helps the authors to envisage how communication between research communities can be enhanced. This critical review allows the authors to systematize possible configurations for research practice in psychology on a continuum of paradigm integration and to specify associated criteria for judging intermethod coherence.

Menurut Tom Jachos SJ, kehadiran sekularisme itu sendiri muncul bersamaan dengan postmodernisme, dan karenanya dalam konteks ini dipahami bahwa sekularisme pertama-tama adalah masalah politik. Banyak sejarawan barat yang berpendapat bahwa sejarah pemikiran Kristen modern bermula dengan gerakan pada abad tujuh belas dan delapan belas, dikenal sebagai enlighment atau pencerahan. Gerakan filsafat ini merupakan gerakan filsafat yang bercirikan sikap rasionalis, naturalis, dan deistis.
Dalam dunia Islam pengaruh dari paham sekularisme dimulai ketika pada zaman imperialisme barat terhadap dunia Islam. Umat Islam dan Khilafah yang pada waktu itu sedang dalam kondisi lemah sedangkan barat sedang dalam proses kemajuan teknologi yang begitu pesat, mendorong sebagian umat Islam untuk mencontoh apa yang dipahami dan dikerjakan barat, salah satunya mengadopsi ide sekularisme.

In the mid-90s, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and the Iranian Ayatollah Khamene’i both banned bloody forms of self-flagellation such as tatbir (cutting the forehead with a sword), calling them backward and un-Islamic. They argued that Shi‘a Muslims ought to imitate Husayn by actively fighting against oppressors rather than passively mourning Husayn’s martyrdom. This prohibition has not been unanimously applied in all Muslim
countries, including Syria, where such practices persisted until the Arab Spring (when virtually all Shi‘a Muslims left the shrine-town where these practices were performed). By closely reading the linguistic, conceptual, and juridical discourses that circulated in Syria in order to justify this position, the paper shows that the performers of tatbir conceived of these rituals in revolutionary, rather than reactionary, terms. By examining the performance and reception of flagellation processions in terms of differing modalities of affect, the paper opens up spaces for rethinking ‘revolution’ and ‘redemption’ in contemporary Twelver Shi‘ism.

This introductory primer explores the arts-based research paradigm and its potential to intersect with and augment traditional social science and educational research methods. The arts-based research paradigm may be broadly understood as a flexible architecture of practice-based theory-building methodologies. Within the ontology that supports the practice of arts-based research, theory and praxis co-construct one another in an ongoing cycle of cause resulting in effect and effect regenerating cause. This textbook aims to reveal how the arts lend themselves to blended spaces of naturalistic inquiry, aiding artists and scientists alike in their conduct of research. Lays out the framework for a flexible architecture of analytic, synthetic, critical-activist, and/or improvisational research methodologies.

Politicians frequently make use of mythologized understandings of the past to mobilize memory as an instrument of politics in the present. Despite the postwar “memory boom”, collective remembrance remains a slippery concept. In politics, collective memory exerts its influence both from the bottom up, as interpretations of the past affect the identities and understandings of political elites, as well as from the top down, as statements by public figures place certain events into the national consciousness while silencing or forgetting others. In addition to summarizing the existing literature, this integrative review proposes a discursive conception of the politics of memory. I argue that research into political memory should focus on (1) the substantive content of collective memory as expressed by actors within state institutions and (2) on the interactive channels through which ideas about the past are conveyed, disputed, silenced, and negotiated outside these formal settings. I substantiate this argument – and demonstrate the relevance of collective remembrance to politics – by drawing examples of the role that memories of World War II continue to play Italian and Slovenian internal politics, as well as in their relations with each other.

Masyithoh, dkk Sebuah penelitian yang benar dan bisa mencapai tujuan penelitiannya akan tergantung dari pendekatan yang digunakannya karena pendekatan sangat menentukan keseluruhan langkah penelitian tersebut. Setidaknya ada tiga jenis pendekatan dalam penelitian, yaitu kuantitatif, kualitatif, dan metode gabungan (mixed methods approach). Adapun pendekatan-pendekatan penelitian tersebut sangat tergantung pada paradigma yang dianut penelitinya (Pardede, 2009).

Being a research scholar myself, I have faced great confusion understanding the philosophical underpinning of research. The available abundant resource only multiplied my owes. It is mainly due to the fact that finding one general definition of a term is very difficult. A term is defined differently in different disciplines and also differently in different context in the same discipline. This makes the life of early researchers even more difficult.

Each of us has a vast network of belief systems that act as a sort of template to help us interpret and organize new information and experiences.  Included in this belief system is what we think is true in regards to the nature of reality.  As we encounter new data we use this network to interpret, analyze, and organize this data.  Our belief systems also act as filters to eliminate data that does not correlated with our constructs.  In this sense, our beliefs can limit our perceptions and keep us trapped in our current ways of thinking.

This study is aimed at to contribute a detailed systematic review on research paradigms, sampling and instrument development issues in the field of business research. This study has reconnoitered the levels of theory and their implications in academic literature. With accession to this the methods of quantitative and qualitative research have been discussed. The main contribution of this study was to explore the sampling size issues. A meticulous review has bared the exact sample size that is supported by different researchers. In line with measurement scale has also been discussed based on previous literature support. Finally, the problems faced during scale development and items generation are discussed in detail.

Resumo O objetivo artigo é discutir as influências de Aristóteles e Galileu na crise de paradigma oriunda da revolução copernicana, ou seja, discutir a mudança da ciência aristotélica, predominante nas universidades europeias, para uma ciência dita mais empírica e as crises institucionais que se seguiram a isso.

Apstrakt: U ovom radu želimo da razmotrimo temeljne pretpostavke na kojima se istraživački rad u oblasti obrazovanja i učenja odraslih zasniva: naša uverenja o stvarnosti (ontologija) i naša uverenja o saznavanju unutar te stvarnosti (epistemologija). Ova uverenja neminovno oblikuju čovekove odluke koje usmeravaju njegove aktivnosti i uopšte angažovanje u svetu koji ga okružuje, pa tako i u samom planiranju i realizaciji naučnog  istraživanja. U tom kontekstu, razumevanje bar nekih od tih uverenja, postavlja se kao ključno za efektivnu kritiku i primenu rezultata istraživanja, a sve u cilju poboljšanja obrazovne prakse, kao i teorijskom razmatranju njene opravdanosti.

This chapter provides an overview of recent qualitative research in classrooms examining English language learners (ELLs). I first present common features of qualitative research and review debates regarding research paradigms in the social sciences and humanities. I also discuss the role of triangulation and capturing participants’ insider or emic perspectives in qualitative research and highlight various data collection methods and ways of combining macrolevel and microlevel analyses, particularly in ethnographic research. Ethical issues, difficulties obtaining informed consent in classroom research, and criteria for evaluating qualitative research are then considered. Three qualitative studies that have been deemed exemplary and meritorious by scholars in English language education are then presented, and some common themes in current qualitative classroom research with ELLs are identified. The chapter concludes with some directions for future qualitative research.

Kuhn wanted to install a new research agenda in philosophy of science. I argue that the tools are now available to better articulate his paradigm and let it guide philosophical research instead of itself remaining the object of philosophical debate.

This article chronicles the rapid expansion since 1990 of research within archival science and characterizes contemporary archival research culture. It examines the role and state of key factors that have led to the development of the existing research infrastructure, such as growth in doctoral education, forums for presenting and publishing research, the numbers and size of graduate archival education programs, availability of diverse funding for research, transdisciplinary and international research collaborations, and application of innovative research methods and tools appropriate for investigating increasingly complex and wide-ranging research questions. An Appendix articulates and names archival research methods, including those derived and adapted from other disciplines, with a view to adding to the ''literary warrant'' for archival research methods, promoting the rigorous application of research design and methods, and providing sources for the teaching of research methods for professional and research careers. The article concludes with recommendations about how to sustain and extend the emerging research front.

While paradigm-bound research has generated powerful insights in international relations, it has fostered a tunnel vision that hinders progress and widens the chasm between theory and policy. In this important new book, Sil and Katzenstein draw upon recent scholarship to illustrate the benefits of a more pragmatic and eclectic style of research, aimed at adjusting and integrating causal mechanisms drawn from different analytic traditions for the purpose of generating usable knowledge concerning specific substantive problems.

PRAISE:

"This is the future of political science. Sil and Katzenstein convincingly demonstrate that drawing on an eclectic mix of causal mechanisms provides stronger explanations, more policy-relevant scholarship, and closer connections to other disciplines." —Andrew Bennett, Georgetown University

“For international relations scholars, methodologists, and social scientists more broadly, this is a treasure trove of bold and lucid arguments. The question: How to overcome compartmentalization in international relations scholarship? The strategy: incorporate ideas and analytic tools from seemingly incommensurable research traditions. The reward: a richer interpretive and explanatory understanding of today’s world.” —David Collier and Ron E. Hassner, University of California, Berkeley

“An exceptional book that should be read by every serious student of world politics. For researchers already combining elements from different approaches with neither roadmap nor rationale, it fills a long-standing lacuna. Even those who disagree with such a research strategy will benefit greatly from engaging with its thoughtful arguments and impressive range of examples.” —Colin Elman, Maxwell School of Syracuse University

"A giant step forward for those of us who span the boundaries between theory and practice. The singular contribution of this important volume is to show how “analytical eclecticism,” as Sil and Katzenstein call it, can be systematized and does not need to rely upon individual intuition or shared folk tales. It will deservedly have an enormous impact on the study of world politics." —John Gerard Ruggie, Harvard University and United Nations

"For two decades, the field of international relations has been a prisoner of the misconceived notion that good scholarship falls neatly into incompatible paradigms. Sil and Katzenstein cogently document the value of eclectic work that borrows from more than one paradigm but remains analytically rigorous. Our conceptual jail has no locks, and if we refuse to exit, we have only ourselves to blame." —Robert O. Keohane, Princeton University

This article distils the core principles of a phenomenological researc h design and, by means of a specific study, ilustrates the phenomenological methodology. After a brief overview of the developments of phenomenology, the research paradigm of the specific stud y follows. Thereafter the location of the data, the data-gathering the data-storage methods are explained. Unstructured in-depth phenomenological interviews supplemented by memoing, esays by participants, a focus group discussion and field notes were used. The data expli citation, by means of a simplified version of Hycner s (1999) proces, is further explained. The article finally contains commentary about the validity and truthfulnes measures, as wel as a syn opsis of the findings of the study.

The long-term historical development and broad geographical variation of Chinese character (Hanzi/Kanji) has made it a crosscultural information sharing platform in East Asia. However, due to the lack of proper research framework, the integration of heterogeneous knowledge grounded in Hanzi and its variants has been a thorny problem. In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework for the knowledge representation of Hanzi in the cross-cultural context. Our proposal is mainly based on two resources: Hantology and Generative Lexicon Theory. Hantology is a comprehensive Chinese character-based knowledge resource created to provide a solid foundation both for philological surveys and language processing tasks, while Generative lexicon theory is extended to catch the abundant knowledge information of Chinese characters within its proposed qualia structure. We believe that the proposed theoretical framework will have great influence on the current research paradigm of Hanzi studies, and help to shape an emergent model of intercultural collaboration.

This chapter surveys a range of methodological, descriptive, and prescriptive issues con- cerning the implications of cognitive psychology for law. Included are (a) a general intro- duction to the subject of heuristics in decision theory, with particular attention to the distinction between optimality-based and heuristic-based decision making models with- in psychology; (b) an attempt to synthesize these two psychological research paradigms into a single conceptual framework that helps to identify important areas in which further research and understanding are needed; (c) an overview of scholarship to date on heuristics and the law, including an observation that this scholarship has ignored certain significant lessons of the heuristics research tradition in psychology; and (d) a compila- tion of suggestions for future interdisciplinary research concerning both the use of heuristics by legal subjects whose behavior the law is attempting to influence and the use of heuristics by polic...

In this essay, we take a fresh look at the IS academic community's enduring concern with the management implications of its research. We examine in particular what we call the "variables-centered" research paradigm, which focuses its attention on covariance among independent and dependent variables. As the predominant research tradition in the field, the variables-centered paradigm ought to constitute a major platform from which our community can speak to issues of managerial interest. Unfortunately, the variables-centered paradigm appears to distance researchers from the organizational actors, such as managers, to whom they would give advice and counsel. Particularly disturbing is the systematic erasure of those very actors from the domain of inquiry. Erased, too, are their actions and means of acting. Thus, when it comes time to offer useful prescriptions for action, our community attempts to do so on the basis of research in which, ironically, neither actors nor action directly appear. We offer some recommendations that may help to rectify this problem and, thereby, enrich the capacity of variables-centered research to speak in an informative and useful way to issues of practice.

Abstract

Many definitions of urban space have been putforward. At the same time projects relating to the city may not always aim at tackling a city and its users in all their aspects from an objective point of view. In this study the human factor in urban design is examined by means of a discussion ofthe paradigms in the works of theorists who have written on the subject of urban space.

In his book Urban Space Rob Krier clearly explains the typological and morphological components that make up the concept of urban space, by means of diagrams and tables. This is followed by a chapter criticising 20th-century urban planning, and finally by a study of the rebuilding of Stuttgart. Since Krier confines himself to historical references, it is hard to describe him as a postmodern. Nevertheless, setting aside the historical aspect, Krier establishes a close tie between the use of geometry and the achievement of human happiness and order, so that his affinity with rational thought cannot be ignored.

In his book; A Pattern Language; Alexander demonstrates the similarity between the structures of sentences and other linguistic elements, and the elements and structures of the language of form. He asserts that just as there are words in languages, so there are patterns in the languages of form. Just as sentences are formed by bringing together words based on connections established in language, so buildings and spaces are created as consequences of pattern language. Since Alexander views the city as a structure that is formed by simultaneous inner connections and can be divided into sub-units, he can be said to take a structural approach to spaces.

Amos Rapoport’s book, Culture, Architecture and Design, is a study of what kind of impact user culture can have on design. According to Rapoport, he is an observer looking on from the outside, and his own realities and those he observes are different. In this respect, when Rapoport is viewed from an ontological point of view, he seems to take a positivistic approach. In terms of epistemology, however, Rapoport asserts that reality depends on personal experiences. Clearly this reflects an interpretive approach. However, his aim is that the researcher should tackle his subject independently of value judgments, and like a positivist, Rapoport is endeavouring to attain some generalisations.

The article shows the three different approachesof three different researchers. By discussing these different studies, the views of the researchers to the urban space and users is debated. Philosophical views (paradigms) contain clues to their views on urban design and the users of spaces.