What Is Pragmatism in Research?

Does Pragmatism Really Mean "Just Use Whatever Works"?

Pragmatism is frequently introduced to researchers through an appealingly simple proposition: choose whatever methods work for the research question.

That explanation captures something important. Pragmatists resist the idea that researchers must select methods merely because a philosophical camp has claimed ownership of them. But reducing pragmatism to methodological convenience strips away much of the philosophy that makes the position coherent.

Pragmatism has substantial roots in the work of philosophers such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Although their versions of pragmatism differ, the tradition broadly redirects attention toward experience, inquiry, action, consequences, and the practical significance of ideas.

For research, the central insight is not "anything goes." It is that knowing and acting are connected. Researchers encounter problems, develop beliefs about them, investigate those beliefs through inquiry, act on what they learn, and revise their understandings in light of consequences.

This makes pragmatism highly relevant to applied and mixed-methods research, but neither domain owns it.

Pragmatism Treats Research as a Process of Inquiry

What Pragmatism Actually Contributes to Research

Pragmatism Is More Than Practicality

The most common misunderstanding deserves attention first.

Pragmatism is often summarized as "what works." David Morgan specifically warns against this crude reduction. His account of pragmatism as a paradigm for social research argues that methodological discussions have often emphasized its practical appeal while giving insufficient attention to its philosophical foundations.

A researcher who says, "I am pragmatic because I chose the easiest methods available" has not demonstrated a pragmatic philosophy.

Practical consequences matter, but pragmatism asks more demanding questions. What problem is inquiry addressing? What beliefs guide our actions? How does experience challenge those beliefs? What difference follows from choosing one form of inquiry rather than another? What kinds of knowledge do our procedures produce, and what consequences follow from acting on that knowledge?

These questions make pragmatism a philosophy of inquiry rather than a synonym for convenience.

Pragmatism Connects Knowing With Doing

Many philosophical accounts of research begin by asking about the relationship between the knower and an external reality.

Pragmatism shifts emphasis toward inquiry as an activity.

For Deweyan pragmatism, people encounter uncertain or problematic situations. They develop possible ways of understanding and responding to those situations, investigate them, observe consequences, and revise beliefs and actions through experience.

Knowledge is therefore not simply something a detached researcher possesses. It participates in an ongoing relationship between beliefs and actions.

This is why pragmatism can be particularly attractive in applied research. The relationship between knowledge and action is not an embarrassing practical matter to be discussed after the "real" research. It can be central to the logic of inquiry.

Experience Is Central to Pragmatist Thinking

Morgan's account draws heavily on Dewey's concept of experience. Experience involves ongoing interaction between people and their environments rather than a purely internal mental representation of an external world.

Our experiences constrain what we can reasonably believe. At the same time, we never encounter the world without interpretation. Beliefs influence actions, actions produce consequences, and those consequences provide experiences through which beliefs may change.

This position allows pragmatism to move away from a stark choice between claiming that reality exists entirely independently of human understanding and claiming that reality is simply created by individual conceptions.

For researchers, the practical implication is significant. Inquiry can focus on how researchers produce knowledge through engagement with problems rather than requiring every methodological decision to be deduced from a prior metaphysical classification.

Pragmatism Asks What Difference a Choice Makes

A pragmatic researcher can ask what practical and intellectual consequences follow from different ways of investigating the same problem.

Suppose a university wants to understand why students withdraw from online courses.

Administrative data could estimate which characteristics are associated with withdrawal. Interviews could investigate how students experience barriers to continuation. Learning-platform data could reveal patterns of participation before withdrawal. An intervention study could test whether additional support changes persistence.

A pragmatic approach does not ask which of these methods belongs to the correct philosophical camp before anything else can happen. It asks what each form of inquiry can contribute to resolving the uncertainty surrounding the problem.

This does not make all methods interchangeable. Each answers different questions and supports different claims.

Methods Are Chosen for Purposes, Not Because a Paradigm Owns Them

Morgan argues that although paradigms and methods can have affinities, there is no deterministic link forcing a particular paradigm to use a particular set of methods. Pragmatism can therefore serve as a philosophical program for social research whether the study uses qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods.

This position challenges familiar formulas such as:

Quantitative = postpositivist.

Qualitative = constructivist.

Mixed methods = pragmatic.

These pairings may describe common methodological associations, but they should not become rules.

The same research method can operate under different paradigmatic assumptions, and pragmatism does not require researchers to use more than one type of data.

Why Is Pragmatism So Closely Associated With Mixed Methods?

Mixed-methods research brought renewed attention to pragmatism partly because researchers needed a philosophical rationale for combining quantitative and qualitative approaches during and after the so-called paradigm wars.

If quantitative methods were permanently attached to one paradigm and qualitative methods permanently attached to an incompatible paradigm, combining them could appear philosophically incoherent.

Pragmatism offered another way to conceptualize the problem.

Johnson and Onwuegbuzie presented pragmatism as an attractive philosophical partner for mixed-methods research while arguing that qualitative and quantitative approaches can be treated as complementary rather than as mutually exclusive methodological camps.

Morgan later emphasized that this historical connection should not be mistaken for an exclusive relationship. Pragmatism can support social research regardless of whether the methods are qualitative, quantitative, or mixed.

Consequently, mixed-methods research does not have to use pragmatism, and pragmatism does not have to use mixed methods.

Pragmatism Does Not Mean "Anything Goes"

Methodological flexibility can easily be confused with absence of standards.

If methods are not dictated by a paradigm, does that mean researchers can simply use whatever procedure produces a convenient answer?

No.

A pragmatic choice still requires justification. The method must be capable of addressing the question it is being used to answer. Sampling must fit the intended inference. Measures need appropriate validity evidence. Qualitative interpretations require adequate empirical grounding. Statistical analyses must satisfy relevant assumptions. Mixed-methods components need a defensible rationale for integration.

Pragmatism changes the basis on which methods are justified. It does not remove the need for justification.

Pragmatism Is Not the Same as Being Practical

Every researcher has practical constraints. Budgets, timelines, access, equipment, participant availability, and ethics shape what can realistically be conducted.

Adapting to those constraints does not automatically make a researcher philosophically pragmatic.

A positivist researcher can make practical compromises. An interpretivist can choose a feasible sample. A critical realist can modify data collection because access changes.

Philosophical pragmatism concerns a broader understanding of inquiry, experience, beliefs, action, and consequences. Ordinary practicality concerns whether you can finish data collection before your funding disappears. The latter is certainly memorable, but it is not a paradigm.

What Does Pragmatism Say About Reality?

Different pragmatist philosophers and methodology scholars approach metaphysical questions differently, so there is no benefit in forcing pragmatism into one simplistic ontological statement.

Morgan's Deweyan account specifically challenges research paradigms built primarily around abstract metaphysical disputes over ontology and epistemology. Instead, he emphasizes experience, inquiry, and the relationship between beliefs and actions.

From this perspective, researchers need not settle every abstract dispute about the ultimate nature of reality before investigating a problem. Experience constrains beliefs, while our understanding of experience remains interpretive and situated.

This does not mean reality is irrelevant. Actions have consequences whether researchers like those consequences or not. Beliefs that consistently fail when acted upon provide reasons for revision.

What Does Pragmatism Say About Knowledge?

Pragmatist epistemology treats knowledge as connected with inquiry and action.

Ideas matter partly through the difference they make when researchers use them to understand and act within experience. Knowledge develops through processes of inquiry in which beliefs can be tested, reconsidered, and reconstructed.

This orientation is less interested in producing an abstract final account of the relationship between knower and known than in understanding how inquiry transforms uncertain situations into more warranted grounds for belief and action.

Importantly, usefulness does not mean personal preference. A claim that produces desired consequences for one researcher is not automatically warranted. Inquiry remains public, evidence based, criticizable, and connected to consequences that can be investigated.

Does Pragmatism Care About Values?

Yes. Pragmatism does not require researchers to pretend that inquiry occurs outside human purposes and values.

Research questions are selected because something is considered worth knowing. Outcomes matter because people value some consequences differently from others. Decisions about what counts as a problem, whose experiences deserve attention, and what changes should follow from findings can have ethical and political dimensions.

Morgan argues that pragmatism's emphasis on action, experience, and consequences also provides resources for addressing politics, ethics, and social justice rather than treating these as entirely separate from inquiry.

This does not mean every pragmatic study must pursue social transformation. It means values and consequences can be examined as part of research rather than automatically positioned outside it.

Does Pragmatism Require Mixed Methods?

No.

A pragmatic study can be entirely quantitative if quantitative evidence is appropriate to the inquiry. It can be entirely qualitative if contextual interpretation provides the knowledge required. It can combine both when integration provides a better response to the research problem.

Morgan explicitly argues against a deterministic link between pragmatism and mixed methods. The contemporary association arose from methodological history, not from a philosophical rule requiring pragmatists to combine data types.

Can Pragmatism Use Quantitative Research?

Yes. If estimating an effect, measuring prevalence, testing an intervention, or modeling a relationship provides the evidence required by the inquiry, quantitative methods can be entirely compatible with pragmatism.

The researcher does not become postpositivist merely by opening statistical software.

A pragmatic justification would focus on why those methods address the research problem, what knowledge they produce, and what consequences follow from using that knowledge.

Can Pragmatism Use Qualitative Research?

Yes. Interviews, observations, documents, focus groups, and other qualitative methods may provide the most useful evidence when the problem requires understanding meanings, processes, experiences, contexts, or implementation.

A pragmatic qualitative study does not necessarily adopt every assumption associated with interpretivism. The philosophical rationale rests instead on the role the evidence plays within the process of inquiry.

How Does Pragmatism Compare With Other Paradigms?

These are broad tendencies. Pragmatism itself is diverse, and no brief comparison can represent every version of these philosophical traditions.

Pragmatism Does Not Eliminate Philosophical Thinking

Researchers sometimes adopt pragmatism because they hope it will allow them to avoid philosophy altogether.

That rather misses the point.

Pragmatism is itself a philosophical tradition. Choosing it because you do not want to think about philosophy is a little like choosing statistics because you would rather avoid numbers.

What pragmatism can do is redirect philosophical attention. Instead of beginning with an abstract requirement to establish ontology and epistemology before research can proceed, pragmatists can focus on the nature of inquiry, the relationship between beliefs and actions, the purposes being pursued, and the consequences of methodological choices.

That is not less philosophical. It is a different philosophical emphasis.

What Pragmatic Research Might Look Like in Practice

This is compatible with pragmatic inquiry because the research moves between a consequential problem, different forms of evidence, action, and evaluation of consequences.

But mixed methods alone does not make it pragmatic. A researcher would still need to explain the philosophical logic connecting the problem, inquiry, methodological choices, and consequences.

Common Misunderstandings About Pragmatism

Should You Use Pragmatism as Your Research Paradigm?

Pragmatism may be particularly attractive when your research begins with a substantive problem and answering it requires flexibility about what forms of evidence will be useful.

That does not mean pragmatism is automatically the correct paradigm for applied research or mixed methods. You still need to determine whether its understanding of inquiry, experience, action, and consequences reflects what your study is actually doing.

If you are conducting mixed methods, also examine whether paradigmatic compatibility matters to the way you are integrating different forms of inquiry. Pragmatism is one response to those philosophical questions, not a phrase that makes them disappear.

A strong pragmatic justification explains why inquiry is organized around the problem, why particular methods contribute relevant knowledge, how different evidence will be connected, and what consequences or actions the research is intended to inform.

Before Calling Your Study Pragmatic

Frequently Asked Questions About Pragmatism in Research

Pragmatism Is About Inquiry, Not Methodological Convenience

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