Abstract
Research should be legitimized and clarified by the philosophical frame by which it metaphorically hangs. Such clarity is important in so far as it helps to provide a foundation for guiding researchers’ evaluations of the quality of their research findings. This article focuses on certain philosophical pre-conditions and justifications, that is, the underlying, pre-theoretical or pre-scientific provisos/specifications/provisions for a researcher’s thinking and hence for his or her decisions about which methodology to follow and methods to apply when researching a problem. In order to achieve this aim, the authors discuss the four ‘sides’ or ‘panels’ of the philosophical frame by which a researcher’s research method, in general, tends to hang, figuratively speaking: namely, (a) integrated personality orientation; (b) transcendental orientation; (c) teleological orientation; and (d) nomothetic orientation. Overlooking this ‘frame by which a researcher’s methodological picture hangs’ might have serious repercussions for how one conducts research.
