PRACTICAL RESEARCH 1
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
Differences Between Inquiry and
Research
Inquiry
Research
 is a learning process
 systematic process of
that motivates you to
obtain knowledge or
information about
people, things, places
or events.
collecting and analyzing
information (data) in
order to increase our
understanding of the
phenomenon with which
we are concerned or
interested.
Importance of Research
 1. To determine the accuracy or otherwise and
validity of popular beliefs, religious practices by
submitting them to systematic scrutiny.
 2. To enhance, modify or refine our knowledge of
phenomenon or various theories surrounding our
environment and society.
 3. To generate new concepts and explanations of
existing rules and policies, beliefs and practices,
economics, political or social system.
 4. To find answers to particular existing
questions through investigation.
 5. To evaluate the findings of other
researches/studies or build on where they
stopped.
Characteristics of Research
 1. Accuracy- it must give correct or accurate data,
which the footnotes, notes, and bibliographical entries
should honestly and appropriately documented or
acknowledges.
 2. Objectiveness- it must deal with facts, not with
mere opinions arising from the assumptions,
generalizations, predictions, or conclusions.
 3. Timeliness- it must work on a topic that is fresh,
new, and interesting to the present society.
 4. Relevance- its topic must be instrumental in
improving society or in solving problems
affecting the lives of people in a community.
 5. Clarity- it must succeed in expressing its
central point or discoveries by using simple,
direct, concise, and correct language.
 6. Systematic- it must take place in an
organized or orderly manner.
Ethics in Research
 1. Informed Consent - a mechanism for ensuring that
people understand what it means to participate in a
particular study so they can decide in a conscious,
deliberate way whether they want to participate. The
participants must be fully informed about the nature of
research, its purposes and potential risks and benefits.
 2. Beneficence and Nonmaleficence - a fundamental
ethical principle in research which means ,” to do good”
and “to do no harm” to study participants.
 3. Respect for Human Dignity
a. Right to Self Determination - the right of the prospective
participants to voluntarily participate or refuse to participate in a
study.
b. Right to Full Disclosure - the researcher must explain fully to
all the participants the nature and purpose of the study, the right
to refuse participation, the researcher’s responsibilities, and
potential risks and benefits.
c. Anonymity and Confidentiality
 4. Justice and Fairness - study participants deserve fair
and equitable treatment before, during, and after the
study period.
Differences between Qualitative
Research and Quantitative Research
 Qualitative Research
 Quantitative Research
- an inquiry process of
understanding a social or
human problem based on
building a complex holistic
picture formed with words,
reporting detailed views of
informants and conducted in
natural setting.
-an objective,
systematic, empirical
investigation of
observable phenomena
through the use of
computational
techniques.
Quantitative Research emphasizes:
 1. Starting with specific hypotheses or questions derived from
theory, previous research
 2. Selecting a large, random sample representative of the
population
 3. Using objective instruments
 4. Presenting results using statistics and making inferences to
the population
 5. “Distance” between researcher and subjects and emphasis
on following the research plan
Qualitative Research emphasizes:
 1. Starting with general research problems and not
formulating hypotheses
 2. Selecting a small, purposive sample which may or may not
be representative of the larger population
 3. Using relatively unstructured instruments and “intense”
data collection
 4. Presenting results mainly or exclusively in words and de-
emphasizing generalizations to the population
 5. Researcher awareness of their own
orientations/biases/experiences and personal interaction in
the context with an emphasis on flexibility in the research.
Characteristics of Qualitative Research
 1. Human understanding and interpretation - Data analysis
results show an individual’s mental, social, and spiritual
understanding of the world. Hence, through their
worldviews, you come to know what kind of human being
he/she is, including his/her values, beliefs, likes, and
dislikes.
 2. Active, powerful, and forceful - A lot of changes occur
continuously in every stage of a qualitative research. As you go
through the research process, you find the need to amend or
rephrased interview questions and consider varied ways of
getting answers, like shifting from mere speculating to
travelling to places for data gathering. You are not fixated to a
certain plan.
 3. Multiple research approaches and methods –
Qualitative research allows you to approach or
plan your study in varied ways. You are free to
combine with this quantitative research and use
all gathered data and analysis techniques.
 4. Specificity to generalization - Specific ideas in a
qualitative research are directed to a general
understanding of something. It follows an inductive or
scientific method of thinking, where you start thinking
of a particular or specific concept that will eventually
lead you to a more complex ideas such as
generalizations or conclusions.
 5. Contextualization - Your goal here is to understand
human behavior. Thus, it is crucial for you to examine
the context or situation of an individual’s life- the
who, what, why, how, and other circumstancesaffecting his/her way of life.
 6. Diversified data in real life situations - A
qualitative researcher prefers collecting data in a
natural setting like observing people as they live and
work, analyzing photographs or videos as they
genuinely appear to people, and looking at classrooms
unchanged or adjusted to people’s intentional
observations.
 7. Abounds with words and visuals - Data gathering
through interviews or library reading, as well as the
presentation of data analysis results, is done
verbally. Likewise, presenting people’s world views
through visual presentation( i.e., pictures, videos,
drawings, and graphs) are significantly used in a
qualitative research.
 8. Internal analysis - Here, you examine the data
yielded by the internal traits of the subject
individuals(i.e., emotional, mental, spiritual
characteristics). You study people’s perception or
views about your topic, not the effects of their
physical existence in your study.
Strengths of Qualitative Research
 1. It adopts a natural approach to its subject matter,
which means that those involve in the research
understand things based on what they find meaningful.
 2. It promotes a full understanding of human behavior
or personality traits in their natural setting.
 3. It is instrumental for positive societal changes.
 4. It engenders respect for people’s individuality as it
demands the researcher’s careful and attentive stand
toward people’s world views.
 5. It is a way of understanding and
interpreting social interactions.
 6. It increases the researcher’s interest in the
study as it includes the researcher’s experience
or background in interpreting verbal and visual
data.
 7. It offers multiple ways of acquiring and
examining knowledge about something.
Weaknesses of Qualitative Research
 1. It involves a lot of researcher’s subjectivity in
data analysis.
 2. It is hard to know the validity and reliability of
the data.
 3. Its open-ended questions yield “data overload”
that requires long-time analysis.
 4. It is time consuming.
 5. It involves several processes, which results
greatly depend on the researcher’s views or
interpretations.
Kinds of Qualitative Research
 1. Case Study - This type of qualitative research usually takes
place in the field of social care, nursing, psychology,
rehabilitation centers, education, etc. It seeks to find answers
to why such thing occurs to the subject. Finding the reason/s
behind such occurrence drives you to also delve into
relationships of people related to the case under study.
 2. Ethnography - Falling in the field of anthropology,
ethnography is the study of a particular cultural group to get a
clear understanding of its organizational set-up, internal
operation, and lifestyle.
 3. Phenomenology - it is the study of how people find their
experience meaningful.
 4. Content and Discourse Analysis -
Content analysis is a method of
quantitative research that requires an analysis or examination of the
substance or content of the mode of communication(letters, books,
journal, photos, video recordings, online messages, emails, audio-visual
materials, etc.) used by a person, group, organization, or any institution in
communicating. A study of language structures used in the medium of
communication to discover the effects of sociological, cultural,
institutional, and ideological factors on the content makes a discourse
analysis.
 5. Historical Analysis - is the examination of primary documents to
make you understand the connection of past events to the present
time.
 6. Grounded Theory - takes place when you discover a new theory
to underlie your study at the time of data collection and analysis.
Interview, observation and documentary analysis are the data
gathering techniques for this type of qualitative research.
DATA ANALYSIS
 Emic description- refers to the personal insights of the key
informants.
 Etic description- refers to the researcher’s views.
 Saturation point- majority of the responses of the participants
are the same.
 Transcribing the data (verbatim transcription)- procedure for
producing a written version of an interview or conversation.
 Coding data- means sifting through data and, as you note
recurring themes, patterns, or concepts, labelling pieces of
data to indicate what theme, pattern, or concept they reflect.
 Sorting data into Categories- the specific words, phrases,
statements, and observations are the data that you draw from
to support your findings.
RESEARCH EVALUATION
1. Trustworthinessit can be established by using four strategies: credibility,
transferability, dependability and conformability, and are
constructed parallel to the analogous quantitative criteria of
internal and external validity, reliability, and neutrality.
2. Credibility- analogous to internal validity.
-it is the extent to which the data and data analysis
are believable and trustworthy.
3. Transferability- analogous to external validity.
- refers to the extent to which one can extend
the account of a particular situation or population to other
persons, times or setting than those directly studied.
4. Dependability- analogous to reliability.
- refers to the extent to
which research findings can be replicated
with similar subjects in a similar context.
5. Confirmability- degree to which research
findings can be confirmed or corroborated by
others.
6. Triangulation- use of multiple methods and
measures of an empirical phenomenon in
order to “overcome problems of bias and
validity”.
“VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY” Concepts in
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
1. Reflexivity- means that the researcher actively engages in self-
reflection about potential for bias (self-awareness and methods
to control bias).
•
Research Journaling- the researcher documents his/her thinking
during the research process.
2. Descriptive validity- factual accuracy of the account.
3. Interpretative validity- the degree to which the researcher
understands the participant’s views, thoughts, feelings,
intentions, experiences and portrays them in the research report.
4. Theoretical validity (Plausibility)- the degree to which the
theoretical explanations developed from the research study fits
5. Internal validity (Credibility)- degree
to which a researcher is justified in
concluding that an observed relationship
is causal.
6. External validity (Transferability)extent to which you can generalize from
the research to other people, settings,
or times.