Complete thesis - Murdoch University

within a Software Engineering environment. Therefore it is appropriate for the followingsections to elaborate on the research approaches that could be seen to the address the issuesidentified in this study. In the context of research for education and for IT disciplines, with afocus on engineering approaches to software development, several approaches are discussed.It is suggested readers of this document could skim those components familiar to them.A framework for the research designThe choice of research design is informed by the discussions of Creswell (2003). He suggeststhat recent developments in research theory and practice require a framework that addressesthe levels of decisions involved in designing research in an environment where pragmatism andmixed methods, in particular, have changed the way research design is considered. The contrastingphilosophical and epistemological assumptions implicit in natural science and socialscience research approaches (described and discussed at great length in, for example, Bunge(1984) and Guba and Lincoln (1994)) have been expanded or extended by other researchers.Zmud (1998) expands earlier work contrasting positivist and interpretivist approaches to researchby aligning problem-oriented research with applied research; Gregg et al (2001) extendby adding the meta-level assumptions of Design Research.However, for Creswell (2003) this would seem to be too narrow an approach to take. Headvocates Crotty (1998)’s framework, which addresses:• what epistemology informs the research [eg objectivism/subjectivism]• what philosophical stance lies behind the methodology in question [eg positivism/interpretivism]• what methodology governs the choice and use of methods [eg experimental/action]• what methods are appropriate [eg interviews/surveys].Because of the cross disciplinary nature of this research, and the contrasting assumptionsmade regarding research in those disciplines, it is essential that the influence of philosophyand epistemology on strategies of research are made explicit.177