نبذة مختصرة : Qualitative researchers wishing to circumnavigate the limitations of positivism, on the one hand, and strong constructionism, on the other, tend to be attracted to critical realism (CR), which offers a middle ground between the two: CR combines ontological realism and epistemological relativism. As a philosophical position for qualitative research, CR has been adopted by researchers utilising diverse data collection and analytic methods. However, there are at least two distinct approaches claiming the CR name: one developed by Joseph Maxwell, with qualitative research specifically in mind, and one developed by Roy Bhaskar and colleagues, as a general philosophy of natural and social sciences. In this paper I compare these two forms of CR on four dimensions, which on the surface they appear to share: (1) what does “critical” mean; (2) epistemological relativism; (3) ontological realism; (4) causality. It is obvious that, below the surface when the details are examined, the two approaches to CR differ considerably on at least the last three dimensions, if not all four. I propose four reasons for preferring Bhaskar’s CR over Maxwell’s CR, arguing the former is more appropriate for qualitative research in psychology.
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