EX-606 Researching Health and Sport Sciences: Philosophical and Methodological Foundations

The course provides an overview of a history of ideas that explains the background for the emergence of modern science relevant to the disciplines of the Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences. Relevant philosophical texts that form the basis for relevant scientific traditions (positivism, empiricism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and recent critical theories) will be reviewed.

1. General introduction to theories of science - philosophical foundations and historical overview

• Key theories and thinkers in the philosophy of science as well as central debates, both in general and specific to health and sport sciences
• Philosophy of science and its position vis a vis its closely related fields, such as sociology of science, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and history of science
• The philosophical underpinnings of methods and methodologies, both in general to health and sport sciences and specifically in the relation to the specialisations

2. Philosophy of science - paradigms, approaches, objectivity, and subjectivity in scientific knowledge

• Ontology versus epistemology, quantitative versus qualitative approaches, modes of inferral: inductive and deductive modes and their variations, as well as their intricate relations to method and methodology
• Approaches and paradigms: realist, constructivist, idealist, and their variant approaches as related to paradigms including empiricism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, semiotics, pragmatism, and rationalism
• Interpretation, trustworthiness, reliability, validity, and replicability of research

3. Research ethics

• History of ethics (key cases, key declarations including the Helsinki and Vancouver declarations, and co-authorship)
• Key debates, ethics in research projects, applied ethics in the medical field, industrial and other funding sources in research
• Scientific misconduct (plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification)

4. The link between theory, methods and the candidates’ own research illustrated by integrating the literature to the individual PhD projects