Week 3 Epistemology Quiz

This week's mandatory epistemology quiz pegged me as "Karl Popper". To be honest, I didn't have any expectations going in, so I was neither surprised nor intrigued by my results, simply amused that my epistemological spirit animal shares my first name. What are the chances? (Karl with a "K" too at that)

I then read the small description provided and found it quite eerie that Popper was basically an exemplar of how I chose to approach all my research, and truth in general. Although my research question is already taking form and the results may not shape it further at this juncture, it did lead me to believe that I would much rather answer a specific question than conduct discovery research. The goal of my proposal is to find the root of a social problem without any of my own bias influencing the methods or outcome (like Popper though, I am aware that my personal bias and opinions on the matter exist), in order to lay the groundwork for a potential fix in the future.

And before I forget to mention, the quiz revealed that I am a postpositivist. After some reading I found that unlike positivists who believe that a researcher is independent from the individual she is researching, a postpositivist acknowledges that factors like a researcher's personal background and values can taint the research and even influence her findings. The goal is objectivity however, which can still be reached by being aware of the effect those biases and opinions have on the research.

What's great about this is finding out that I have a predisposition to want to eliminate all biases in my findings, so as to get to the objective truth. That'll help somewhere down the line... I'm sure of it.