The Researcher's Thinking Foundation: Paradigm and Axioms in Quantitative and Qualitative Research
Siti Nurkhofipah
Undergraduate Student of Islamic Education Management, Class VE
UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung
Phenomenon:
Researchers often become trapped in numbers without meaning or narratives without evidence, causing research to lose balance. Paradigm and axioms are therefore essential as the scientific foundation for thinking and maintaining equilibrium in research.
Assumption:
Paradigms and axioms are believed to be philosophical foundations that determine the direction, methods, and consistency of research so that the results become more valid, meaningful, and scientifically accountable.
Gap:
Many studies are still inconsistent between the paradigm and axioms with the methods applied, leading to methodological inconsistency, limited validity, and a lack of meaningful scientific contribution.
Purpose of Writing:
This paper aims to explain the importance of paradigms and axioms as the foundation of researchers' thinking so that both quantitative and qualitative studies are consistent, valid, and meaningful.
Discussion
First, quantitative research emphasizes objectivity, measurement, and prediction, producing empirical generalizations but limited in capturing dynamic social complexity. Meanwhile, qualitative research emphasizes meaning, experience, and social interaction, providing deep but contextual understanding of complex educational realities. Paradigms and axioms serve as philosophical foundations guiding researchers in determining methods, assumptions about reality, and maintaining research consistency. Methodology and validity guarantee research credibility: quantitative research focuses on measurement, qualitative research on meaning, and both can be integrated through mixed methods approaches.
Second, problem identification requires clarity, relevance, and focus so that research becomes meaningful, methodologically tested, and contributes significantly. Conceptual definitions provide a theoretical framework, ensuring clarity of meaning, avoiding multiple interpretations, and connecting the study to broader academic foundations. Operational definitions bridge abstract concepts with empirical reality through measurable indicators, ensuring validity, reliability, and systematic verifiability. The relationship between problems and concepts ensures that research has a strong theoretical-empirical basis, maintaining consistency, validity, and producing meaningful and accountable knowledge.
Third, a construct is an abstract representation of a phenomenon, bridging theory and empirical data, serving as the basis for measurable indicators in scientific research. Indicators connect theoretical constructs and empirical data, transforming abstract concepts into measurable, relevant, clear, and verifiable variables. Operationalization elaborates indicators into instruments, linking abstract concepts with systematic measurement to produce valid, consistent, and reliable data. Indicator validity ensures alignment among constructs, indicators, and instruments, guaranteeing consistent, accurate, and scientifically accountable research results.
Fourth, phenomena are real events that become the starting point of research, bridging empirical reality with theoretical frameworks for scientific analysis. Data represent phenomena as the foundation of scientific analysis, collected validly and reliably, and then processed methodologically to produce new knowledge. Variables are the main components of quantitative research, facilitating causal analysis through independent, dependent, moderator, mediator, and control variables systematically. Measurement scales ensure analytical accuracy, linking phenomena, data, variables, and concepts so that research remains consistent, valid, reliable, and scientifically meaningful.