Research paradigm is a philosophical assumption about the world and how it is to be studied to understand a phenomenon and paradigms either an as interpretivism or a positivist stance (Ngulube and Ukwoma 2019). duPlooy-Cilliers (2014) notes that paradigms are more likely to be referred to as research traditions. In other words, they educate the researcher on how to conduct research effectively. As such Kivunja and Kuyini (2017) opined, the research paradigm is made up the abstract beliefs and norms that govern how a researcher views the world and how they perceives and behave within it. A paradigm is a set of conceptual beliefs and ideas that determine how a researcher sees the world, understand it and interacts within it.
Similarly,Abdul Rehman and Alharthi (2016) note that a paradigm is a system of fundamental beliefs and theoretical structure with assumptions of epistemology, ontology, methodology and methods. In addition, it is a means to understand and study the true reality of the world.
Bryman (2012) noted that a paradigm is a set of beliefs that guides the researcher in a study and how to view work in a particular field. Kivunja and Kuyini (2017) identify the following as some of the importance of research paradigms:
i. Paradigms offer beliefs and dictates, for researchers in a specific subject area;
ii. They manipulate what ought to be studied, how it should be studied;
iii. They determine the outcomes of the study and how to be translated; and iv. The paradigm describes a researcher's philosophical orientation.
The foregoing therefore shows that a research paradigm is fundamentally aimed at giving the appropriate direction to a given research. In other words, knowing what a paradigm or tradition one ascribes to as a researcher, this is critical since it defines, which questions are worthy of investigation and what processes must be followed in order for the responses to be accepted
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(du Plooy-Cilliers 2014:19). The next sections therefore give an overview of the major research traditions namely interpretivism, positivism, post-positivism and pragmatism. Reference will be made to the worldview adopted for this study.
4.2.1. Interpretivism
This is a research paradigm that is more concerned with an individual opinion and perception about a particular research phenomena. According to Chowdhury (2014) and Punch (2013) Interpretivism is a popular philosophical approach that allows people to understand the social world through meaningful interpretations of the world, which is hampered by others who have already interpreted the meaning generated as part of their daily activities. Interpretivism allows for a deeper understanding of a concept and an exploration of the world in which they live (Rahi 2017). The interpretivism research paradigm is also referred to as social constructivism and qualitative research.
Govender (2018) on the other hand, noted that interpretivists subscribe to the following:
i. Believe meaning is inherent in human action;
ii. Anti- positivist;
iii. Distinguishes natural reality from social reality.
iv. Interpret facts in context;
v. Assign meaning to own experience; and vi. Focus on meaning making;
Abdul Rehman and Alharthi (2016) and Thanh and Thanh (2015) further added that interpretivists avert that:
i. The epistemology of interpretivists is subjective;
ii. Interpretivism believes in multiple realities that have been socially constructed;
iii. Observers cannot have direct access to external reality without being contaminated by their worldviews, ideas and backgrounds;
iv. The reality cannot be known as it is, because it is always mediated by our senses and;
v. Truth and reality are created not discovered. The next section discusses the positivism paradigm.
87 4.2.2. Positivism
The positivist paradigm applies to the researcher’s endeavour to clarify the phenomena he/she studies in the best economical way that is available (Kivunja and Kuyini 2017). Aliyu and Bello (2014) added that positivism can be understood as a research technique that is recognized in the ontological norms and principles that truth and reality are free and independent of the viewer and observer. According to Rahi (2017), the positivist paradigm encompasses scientific methodology, empirical science and quantitative research. Addae and Quan-Baffour (2015) noted that positivism believes that natural-scientific assumptions and procedures may be applied to the social sciences. In this respect, natural science assumptions and methods can be used to study social phenomena even though natural science is concerned with static nature. In contrast, social science concerns with more complex and dynamic nature of human beings.
More importantly, methods of scientific inquiry are crucial in social science, as they seek to address social phenomena.
The positivist approach was proposed by a French thinker, August Comte (1798-1857). The positivist world view describes a world view of research, which is guided in scientific methods of investigation. Comte likewise proposed that experimentation, observation and reason in light of experienced should be the reason for understanding human conduct. In this way, there is legitimate means for expanding knowledge and human comprehension (Kivunja and Kuyini (2017). Kaboub (2008 in Aliyu and Bello 2014) noted that the concept of positivism came into being as truth looking for a worldview in the latter part of the nineteenth century because of Comte’s censure of metaphysics and argued that only technical and scientific proofs can unveil the reality concerning the truth. Govender (2018:359) states that the positivist world is underpinned by the following:
i. Generalises results;
ii. It uses scientific methods to study human action;
iii. Assumes an objective world;
iv. Is not interested in meaning, but only proven facts; and
v. Searches for facts-facts through comparison and association of variables.
Kivunja and Kuyini (2017) noted that the positivist research paradigm employs deductive logic formulations of hypotheses, testing those hypotheses and providing operational definitions and
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mathematical equations, calculations, extrapolations and expressions to arrive at conclusions.
The next section presents the post-positivism paradigm.
4.2.3. Post-Positivism
Post-positivism developed from proceeding paradigms as people’s ideas of knowledge changed (Ngulube and Ukwoma 2019). It proposes a new paradigm that has the potential to transform positivism from a narrow perspective to a more comprehensive approach to real-world situation (Henderson 2011). It is established on the assumption that the methods to be connected in a specific study ought to be chosen given the research question being addressed. Panwar, Ansari, and Ali Shah (2017) asserted that post-positivism was developed by researchers in response to the limitations of positivism as a paradigm. They discovered that positivism, which rests itself on observable and empirical analytical facts, did not meet the requirements for social sciences resources. Post-positivists believe in determinism, which states that causes (probably) influence outcomes. As a result, the problems explored by post-positivists reflect the necessity to evaluate the factors that influence results, such as those discovered in experiments (Creswell 2018).
Henderson (2011) noted the following:
i. Post-positivism highlights meaning, unlike interpretivism and attempts to explain social issues;
ii. That knowledge is not neutral (and never really is);
iii. Post-positivism indicates that the social sciences are often fragmented; and iv. All knowledge is built socially.
The next section discusses pragmatism paradigm.
4.2.4. Pragmatism
The pragmatic approach underpinned the study. This approach is considered appropriate because of its ability to allow for the integration of both qualitative and quantitative methods (Creswell 2018), see also, Ngulube and Ukwoma 2019). Kelly and Cordeiro (2020) noted that pragmatism is a philosophical and epistemological paradigm for interrogating and assessing ideas and beliefs regarding how well they work in the real world. It also aided research in dissecting the research problem and finding the aspects of the problem that respondents found
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most beneficial. Furthermore, the pragmatic approach allows researchers to be flexible in their selection of methods to address research problems (Brierley 2017). More so, it allows them researchers to incorporate ethical considerations into their study and the inclusion of participants with varying degrees of knowledge, experience and control over the process under investigation (Kaushik and Walsh 2019).Pragmatism allows for a variety of approaches, worldviews and assumptions as well as distinct types of data collection and analysis (Creswell 2018). This therefore indicated that pragmatism as a paradigm allows a researcher to choose a methods that is suitable for the problem under investigation.
This makes it suitable as a reason for research methods mediating into the world and not simply observing the world. Some of the advantages of pragmatism include:
i. Pragmatism centres around what things will have any kind of effect and additionally interfacing abstract matters on the epistemological level to the procedural level;
ii. It focuses on the transferability, provides a paradigm that can create new disciplinary theories based in specific context; and
iii. Finally, it makes strong emphasis on research questions, communication, and shared meaning-making and it prescribes a harmony amongst subjectivity and objectivity all through the inquiry (Baker 2016).
Tran (2017) added that pragmatism also enables the potential to and the probability of working back and forth between qualitative data and quantitative data, which is seen as irreconcilable and offers researchers a chance to search for constructive purposes of connection between the two types of data. Some of the features of pragmatism, as highlighted by Creswell (2018) include:
i. Pragmatism is not tied to a single philosophical paradigm, meaning that data can be collected from qualitative and quantitative means;
ii. Pragmatists do not believe in absolute unity in the world, meaning that the data for the research can be generated from different sources;
iii. What works at the time is truth; and
iv. Individual researchers have total autonomy; that is to say, the researchers have all the freedom to source data from anywhere if the purpose of the research is attained.
Consequently, it was earlier stated that the present study was built on the pragmatism paradigm since the aim was to address the marketing quality of information resources and services in
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medical libraries by applying different methods of data collection. The study used both quantitative and qualitative methods and the results of these approaches complement one another. Thus, the literature reviewed implicitly indicates that only a handful of research studies has used mixed methods in that area of knowledge. The reason may be that the field of LIS marketing is still a growing area of research in general and specifically in Nigeria. See Gupta, Gupta and Gupta (2019), Anyanwu, (2018) and Ani and Okwueze (2017) in section 3. 6. for details.
Furthermore, Ngulube and Ukwoma (2019) conducted a study on the cartographies of research designs in library information sciences research in Nigeria and South Africa. The study reported that LIS research there was dominated by positivist epistemologies (quantitative) and related survey research methods. Dissertations from Nigeria have not described their research paradigms. This means that the dominant paradigm in LIS research there is difficult to establish. There has been limited use of qualitative and mixed methods research methodologies (Ngulube and Ukwoma 2019). Based on the foregoing, it can be understood that the use of the pragmatism paradigm is not generally a common paradigm in LIS research in Nigeria generally and in particular marketing in LIS research. Due to the fact that research methodologies emerge from research paradigms, the next section discusses the research methodology and methods employed to answer the research questions and methods used to collect data, respectively. The next section discusses research methodology and methods.