03 · What You Need to Know
A Practical Principle for Deciding What Philosophy Belongs in Your Research
Research Philosophy Is There to Explain Research
This sounds obvious, but it provides a useful editing rule.
If a philosophical concept helps explain why your research question, methodology, evidence, analysis, researcher role, or conclusions take a particular form, it probably belongs.
If it demonstrates only that you read about a philosopher, its methodological value is less obvious.
Crotty's influential account emphasizes relationships among epistemology, theoretical perspective, methodology, and methods. His framework is useful precisely because philosophy is connected to the research process rather than treated as an independent literature review.
Howell similarly describes understanding philosophical positions and paradigms as integral to deploying methodologies and methods appropriate to a research project, thesis, or dissertation.
Philosophy should therefore earn its space by helping readers understand what the research is doing.
Begin With the Assumptions That Matter
You do not necessarily need to explain every philosophical dimension with equal depth.
Ask which assumptions are consequential to your study.
If you are conducting interpretive qualitative research, epistemology and researcher-participant relationships may require substantial attention because interpretation and knowledge production are central.
If you are conducting critical realist research, ontology may need more explicit treatment because the distinction among observable events, underlying mechanisms, and reality is fundamental to the explanatory logic.
If your study is transformative, axiology, power, and ethical commitments may require greater emphasis.
If your study is a conventional postpositivist experiment, the most relevant issues may involve external reality, fallibility, measurement, objectivity, hypothesis testing, and provisional inference.
Proportionality is more useful than philosophical symmetry.
You Do Not Automatically Need Separate Definitions of Everything
A common methodology template asks researchers to define:
Ontology.
Epistemology.
Axiology.
Methodology.
Paradigm.
Worldview.
Research philosophy.
Then the researcher spends several pages distinguishing terms before saying anything about the study.
These concepts can matter, but terminology varies across methodological traditions. Mackenzie and Knipe note that research texts differ substantially in their use and emphasis of terms such as paradigm, epistemology, ontology, knowledge claims, and methodology.
Define distinctions your argument actually requires. Do not assume every neighboring concept deserves its own subsection.
A Useful Minimum Has Three Parts
When an explicit paradigm explanation is warranted, a concise but substantive account usually needs to accomplish at least three things.
Identify Name the philosophical position or describe the assumptions governing the study.
Explain Clarify the aspects of that position that matter to your research, using authoritative methodological or philosophical sources.
Connect Show how those assumptions influence the methodology, methods, analysis, researcher role, integration, or claims.
Creswell's guidance follows essentially this logic when recommending that proposals identify the worldview, define its basic ideas, and explain how it shaped the research approach.
The third step is the one most often missing.
The Paradigm Label Alone Is Not Enough
"This study adopts an interpretivist paradigm."
That sentence tells readers the label but not the methodological consequences.
A stronger explanation might establish that the study treats participants' meanings as contextual, recognizes researcher interpretation as part of knowledge production, and therefore uses a methodology designed to develop contextual understanding rather than estimate one population-level truth.
Now the reader knows what interpretivism does in the study.
The same principle applies to positivism, postpositivism, pragmatism, critical realism, transformative inquiry, and other positions.
Do Not Explain the Entire History of the Paradigm Unless You Need It
Suppose your study uses pragmatism.
You could begin with Charles Sanders Peirce, move to William James, devote several paragraphs to John Dewey, discuss neopragmatism, and eventually arrive at mixed-methods research.
That intellectual history may be valuable in a philosophy paper.
For many empirical studies, however, the reader primarily needs to know which version of pragmatism informs the research and what it means for inquiry, methodological pluralism, action, and consequences.
The same principle applies elsewhere. You do not need a biography of Auguste Comte to run a postpositivist experiment, nor a complete account of Roy Bhaskar's intellectual development to use critical realist reasoning appropriately.
Historical material belongs when it clarifies a contested concept or distinguishes the specific philosophical version you use.
Do Not Review Every Paradigm Before Choosing One
Another common structure looks like this:
Positivism: four paragraphs.
Postpositivism: four paragraphs.
Interpretivism: four paragraphs.
Constructivism: four paragraphs.
Pragmatism: four paragraphs.
Then: "This study adopts pragmatism."
Unless the purpose is genuinely comparative, most of those paragraphs concern philosophies the study does not use.
A brief contrast can be helpful when it establishes why your chosen position fits the question better than an obvious alternative. A catalogue usually adds length faster than justification.
Explain Contested Terms More Carefully
Some philosophical labels are used differently across disciplines and methodological traditions.
Constructivism and interpretivism, for example, are sometimes combined and sometimes distinguished.
"Critical realism" can also create confusion because some older paradigm frameworks use related terminology differently from contemporary Bhaskarian critical realism.
"Pragmatism" is frequently reduced to "whatever works," which may not adequately represent the philosophical tradition.
If your chosen term is contested or used in several ways, explain which meaning you adopt and cite the relevant tradition.
That is a good reason to spend additional words.
Explain Philosophy More Fully When It Changes the Methodology
The amount of explanation should increase when readers cannot understand the methodological strategy without it.
For example, a critical realist study using retroduction to infer possible generative mechanisms needs enough philosophical explanation for readers to understand why the analysis moves from observed events toward mechanisms that may not be directly observable.
A transformative study involving community participation may need enough philosophical discussion to explain why power, cultural responsiveness, and marginalized knowledge influence who participates in research decisions.
An interpretive study may need enough epistemological explanation to justify why reflexivity matters and why researcher involvement is not treated simply as contamination.
The philosophy is doing methodological work, so readers need to see it.
Explain Less When the Assumptions Are Conventional and Not Contested
Some research communities operate with widely shared assumptions that are communicated through established methodological conventions.
A journal article reporting a conventional experiment may not require a lengthy postpositivist philosophy section if readers can understand the design, measurement, analysis, uncertainty, and inference without it.
A dissertation may require more explicit demonstration of methodological understanding, particularly if institutional guidelines ask for it.
The genre therefore matters.
This is why the question of whether a thesis or dissertation needs a research philosophy section cannot be answered from philosophy alone.
More Philosophy Is Needed When You Combine Perspectives
If your study uses one familiar paradigm coherently, a focused explanation may be sufficient.
If you combine different philosophical perspectives, the burden of explanation increases.
Readers need to know what each perspective contributes, where they agree, where they differ, and how any tensions are handled.
The same applies when different paradigms inform different components of mixed-methods research. The philosophical discussion may need to address paradigmatic compatibility and integration.
Philosophical complexity should produce explanatory complexity only when the study actually contains it.
More Philosophy Is Needed When Your Position Is Unusual for the Methodology
Suppose you use quantitative methods within a transformative paradigm or qualitative interviews within a postpositivist framework.
These combinations can be defensible, but readers may reasonably want more explanation because the pairing differs from familiar conventions.
Explain what the evidence represents under your philosophy and why the method can generate knowledge appropriate to the research question.
Unconventional does not mean incorrect. It usually means the justification needs to carry more weight.
More Philosophy Is Needed When the Paradigm Is Part of the Contribution
Sometimes the philosophical framing is not merely methodological background. It is part of what the study contributes.
A paper may propose a critical realist reinterpretation of an established educational phenomenon. A dissertation may develop a decolonial methodological framework. A mixed-methods study may explicitly test a dialectical integration strategy.
In these cases, readers need substantially more philosophical argument because the philosophy itself is being advanced, adapted, or evaluated.
The proportionality principle still applies. The philosophical burden is simply larger.
A Practical "So What?" Test Helps
After every philosophical paragraph, ask:
So what does this mean for my research?
If the paragraph explains why you conceptualized the phenomenon in a particular way, useful.
If it explains why you selected or rejected a methodological approach, useful.
If it explains researcher positionality, evidence, causation, analysis, integration, or inference, useful.
If the answer is, "Nothing, but this philosopher was born in 1859," reconsider whether the paragraph belongs.
Another Test Is Whether the Philosophy Reappears
A well-integrated philosophical position usually has consequences later in the methodology and interpretation.
If you claim constructivism, does your analysis actually attend to construction of meaning?
If you claim postpositivism, do your conclusions acknowledge uncertainty and fallibility?
If you claim critical realism, do you distinguish empirical observations from proposed mechanisms?
If you claim a transformative paradigm, are power and marginalized perspectives visible in consequential research decisions?
If the paradigm disappears immediately after the philosophy subsection, either the later methodology needs stronger alignment or the earlier philosophy may be unnecessarily elaborate.
There Is No Universal Word Count
Researchers understandably want a number.
Five hundred words? One thousand? Five pages?
No defensible universal limit exists because the necessary amount depends on methodology, discipline, genre, institutional expectations, philosophical complexity, and the role the paradigm plays in the research.
A straightforward empirical study may need only a concise explanation. A philosophically complex qualitative or mixed-methods dissertation may require substantially more.
Word count is therefore a poor substitute for methodological purpose.
You Can Use a Proportionality Framework Instead
| Situation |
Likely philosophical burden |
| Paradigm is conventional in the field and has limited methodological consequences requiring explanation |
Brief and focused |
| Thesis program explicitly requires ontology, epistemology, and paradigm justification |
Moderate, according to institutional expectations |
| Qualitative methodology depends substantially on assumptions about meaning and researcher involvement |
Moderate to substantial |
| Critical realist explanation depends on mechanisms, emergence, and stratified reality |
Enough to establish those concepts and their analytical consequences |
| Transformative research centers power, values, participation, and social justice |
Enough to establish how those commitments shape the inquiry |
| Multiple philosophical perspectives are deliberately combined |
Substantial enough to explain their relationship and tensions |
| Philosophical framework itself is part of the study's contribution |
Potentially extensive |
Philosophy Should Stop When Additional Detail Stops Changing the Research
This is perhaps the most practical stopping rule.
Once readers understand the relevant assumptions, why they fit the research, and what methodological consequences follow, additional philosophical detail may have diminishing value.
Ask whether another paragraph changes how readers understand your design, evidence, analysis, researcher role, or claims.
If it does, keep it.
If it only demonstrates that there is more literature on the paradigm, there will always be more literature. Philosophy has been accumulating references for a few millennia, so waiting until the literature is exhausted is not an especially promising submission strategy.
Watch Out
Do not use philosophical length as a proxy for methodological rigor. The strongest philosophy section is not the longest one. It is the one that makes the logic of the research clearer and leaves no important philosophical assumption unexplained.
