The Importance Of Acculturation

Acculturation – A term used to refer to the process in which individuals are accepting the cultural traits or social patterns of another culture to fit in, particularly in reference to the integration with the dominant group (e.g., an immigrant adopting the British norms and values). Acculturation also suggests that both cultures remain remotely distinctive, however; both cultures add something to one another.
Epistemology – Is the investigation into the method of acquiring knowledge. It aims to answer the question, “How do we know?” It focuses on the nature of concepts, the development of concept, the truthfulness of the sense, reasoning as well as all things mental. It is concerned with how our minds are able to identify the truthfulness

The Positivist paradigm is based upon the realist ontology, which suggests that “there exists a reality out there, driven by immutable natural laws” (Guba, 1990:19). As a result, positivism points out the causal relationships and commonalities between different aspects of the surrounding world. Due to the Positivist paradigm having an objectivist epistemology, they require the researcher to discover the real world which in order to do so they must “put questions directly to nature and allow nature to answer back” (Guba, 1990:19). Furthermore, researchers are required to remain detached from the study as this enables them to gain an objective view to understand the information

Participants used in Positivist research are randomly selected, and “The essential feature of experimental research is that investigators deliberately control and manipulate the conditions which determine the event in which they are interested, introduce an intervention and measures the different that it makes” (Cohen, Mannion & Morrison, 2011:313). Data collected from a positivist approach is presented in a Quantitative form allowing researcher to generalise the results