Understanding Pragmatic Research

3. What is Pragmatism?

Whilst positivist and interpretivist approaches are mutually exclusive, pragmatism is an approach that suggests that there are in fact many different ways of interpreting the world and conducting research to investigate reality and that combination of different approaches may provide a broader understanding of the phenomena being investigated.

Pragmatism involves research designs that incorporate operational decisions based on ‘what will work best’ in finding answers for the questions under investigation and this enables pragmatic researchers to conduct research in innovative and dynamic ways to find solutions to research problems.

This resource will explore the nature of pragmatism as a research paradigm and show some examples of where it has been used to underpin research methods.

Drag each approach listed below onto the most appropiate Method.