PU565 Unit 2 Paradigm Comparison Memo Example

What Each Paradigm Would Make of the Same Refusal: A Unit 2 Paradigm Comparison Memo Setting Postpositivist and Constructivist Assumptions Side by Side and Recommending Which One the Composite Hearing Study Should Start From

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PU565: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods

Unit 2 Paradigm Comparison Memo

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The composite county study and its principal investigator are invented; the paradigm descriptions and the research cited are real.

Memorandum

To: Principal investigator, Culbreth County hearing study From: Project methodologist Subject: Paradigm assumptions, and which one the first phase should work from

The Data Point Both Paradigms Have to Explain

A 71-year-old county resident with self-reported difficulty hearing conversation says: I looked at them in the drugstore, they were 300 dollars, and I thought, not yet.

The Comparison, Assumption by Assumption

1. What exists. The postpositivist position treats hearing aid non-use as a real behavior with real causes that exist whether or not anybody studies them. The constructivist position treats non-use as meaningful action whose content is the resident's own understanding of what the device would signify.

2. What can be known. The first says we can approximate the causes while never confirming them, so knowledge is provisional and falsifiable. The second says we can produce an interpretation of the resident's meaning, built with them, which does not approximate a hidden truth because there is none behind it.

3. The researcher's position. The first requires distance, standard questions and procedures that reduce the investigator's influence. The second treats the investigator's presence as part of the data and asks for it to be recorded rather than removed.

4. What counts as quality. The first looks for reliability, validity and generalizability. The second looks for credibility, a documented audit trail and whether participants recognize the account.

5. What each would do with the quotation. Postpositivist: code price as the barrier, operationalize it, and test whether cost predicts non-use in a larger sample. Constructivist: notice the words not yet, treat them as the unit of interest, and ask what future event the resident is waiting for.

One paradigm hears a price. The other hears not yet, and the whole design turns on which of those two the study is built to collect.

Why the Difference Is Not Only Philosophical

If price is the barrier, the county's intervention is a subsidy. If not yet is the finding, a subsidy will be spent by people who were going to buy anyway, and the resident in the quotation will still be waiting. The paradigm choice therefore decides what the county is told to do, which is the reason this memo exists rather than a theory chapter. The published literature supports taking the meaning seriously: stigma and identity run through accounts of hearing loss consistently enough that cost alone is a poor model of the decision (Wallhagen, 2010), while the prevalence work establishes only that use is low and leaves the reasons open (Chien & Lin, 2012).

Recommendation

Begin in the constructivist position for phase one, with semi-structured interviews, researcher reflexivity recorded, and analysis that holds participants' own terms rather than converting them immediately into variables. Move to the postpositivist position for phase two, where the candidate reasons from phase one become survey items with fixed options and the question becomes how common each is. This is not a compromise between paradigms; it is a sequence in which each phase is answerable on its own terms.

How the Sequence Would Be Integrated

A two-phase study has to say where the phases touch, and the memo names two points now rather than leaving them to the final report. The first is instrument construction: interview findings supply the response options for the survey items, and the wording of those options should come from participants rather than from the literature. The second is interpretation, where a survey result that contradicts an interview theme is reported as a contradiction instead of being smoothed over. Writing these points down in advance is what the mixed methods literature treats as the difference between a study with two strands and a study that integrates them (Fetters et al., 2013).

What This Recommendation Costs

Three things, named so the investigator is not surprised. Phase one will not produce a number the commission can quote, and a county funder who expects one in month four will be disappointed. The interview data will resist summary, since the useful material is in phrasing rather than in frequencies. And the two phases will need two accounts of quality in the final report, because reliability is the wrong standard for phase one and credibility is the wrong standard for phase two. A report that applies one set of criteria to both strands will be criticized by whichever reviewer notices.

What Would Change the Recommendation

If the county's purpose is to choose between two specific programs it has already designed, the sequence should reverse: a survey measuring uptake under each option answers that question directly, and interviews would be a slower route to the same decision. The recommendation here follows from the county having no candidate explanation at all, and that is the condition that makes an interpretive first phase worth its cost.

References

Chien, W., & Lin, F. R. (2012). Prevalence of hearing aid use among older adults in the United States. Archives of Internal Medicine, 172(3), 292-293. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinternmed.2011.1408

Fetters, M. D., Curry, L. A., & Creswell, J. W. (2013). Achieving integration in mixed methods designs: Principles and practices. Health Services Research, 48(6), 2134-2156. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.12117

Wallhagen, M. I. (2010). The stigma of hearing loss. The Gerontologist, 50(1), 66-75. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnp107