PRACTICAL RESEARCH 1 Ms. ROZELL G.

CABRERA
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
 LESSON 1:

RESEARCH Nature,
Importance and
Characteristics,

Qualitative Research
Kinds of
RESEARCH
❑“Research” comes in different terms. It can be
investigation, record, fact-find, analysis, test,
experiment, and so on. If we are going back to
history, the term RESEARCH comes from the middle
french word “reserche” meaning “to go seek out”
which is also derived from an old French term
“recerchier” meaning “search.”
RESEARCH

❑Research is an organized investigation and

study of materials and sources to create
facts and reach new inferences.
❑Research has come up with developing
appropriate solutions to improve the individual’s
quality of life.
RESEARCH

❑It is analogous to inquiry, in that, both involve

investigation of something through questioning. However,
the meaning of research is more complicated than
inquiry because it does not center mainly on raising
questions about the topic, but also on carrying out a
particular order of research stages.
RESEARCH

❑Central to research is your way of discovering

new knowledge, applying knowledge in various
ways as well as seeing relationships of ideas,
events, and situations. Research then puts you
in a context where a problem exists.
THERE ARE TWO (2) THINGS THAT WE NEED TO TAKE NOTE:

❑First, research is not only about the discovery of

something unknown, it is coming up with a new
explanation of something that is known.
❑Second, research is a process. It is a process of
searching for something to solve an existing problem
or difficulty to solve.
IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH
❑Lifestyle Lounge also lists down seven importance of
research. It says that “contrary to popular belief research
need not only pertain to science.” Research is important in
all spheres of life. (“Importance of Research, “2017)
Research is important:
IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH
1. to gather necessary information
2. to make changes
3. to improve standard of living
4. to have a safer life
5. to know the truth
6. to explore our history
7. to understand the arts
CHARACTERSTIC OF RESEARCH
1. Accuracy - It must give correct or accurate data, which
the footnotes, notes, and bibliographical entries should
honestly and appropriately document or acknowledged.
2. Objectiveness - It must deal with facts, not with mere
opinions arising from assumptions, generalizations,
predictions, or conclusions.
3. Timeliness - It must work on a topic that is fresh, new,
and interesting to the present society.
CHARACTERSTIC OF RESEARCH
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.
7. Empirical - Research is based on direct experience or
observation by the researcher.
CHARACTERSTIC OF RESEARCH
8. Logical - Research is based on valid procedures and
principles.
9. Cyclical - Research is a cyclical process because it starts
with a problem and ends with a problem.
10. Analytical - Research utilizes proven analytical
procedures in gathering the data, whether historical,
descriptive, and experimental and case study.
CHARACTERSTIC OF RESEARCH
11. Critical - Research exhibits careful and precise
judgment.
12. Methodical - Research is conducted in a methodical
manner without bias using systematic method and
procedures.
13. Replicability - The research design and procedures are
replicated or repeated to enable the researcher to
arrive at valid and conclusive results.
THE RESEARCH PROCESS

❑Research is a process that requires patience

and thought. There is no easy way to make
certain that you have exhausted every
resource and found the best research.
Research is more of an art rather than a
science.
BELOW IS A DIAGRAMMATIC PRESENTATION OF
THE STEPS TAKEN WHEN DOING RESEARCH:
A. Define the Research Problem - To begin your
research, you must look at a significant real-life
problem. Factors like area of interest, availability of
fund, socio-economic significance of the study, and
the safety measures to be undertaken should be
considered in finding and defining the research
problem.
BELOW IS A DIAGRAMMATIC PRESENTATION OF
THE STEPS TAKEN WHEN DOING RESEARCH:
B. Review the Literature - Read various
publications or surf the internet to become
aware of the previous works already done
about the chosen topic. You may utilize
different resources like science books,
magazines, journals, newspapers, or even in
the internet.
BELOW IS A DIAGRAMMATIC PRESENTATION OF
THE STEPS TAKEN WHEN DOING RESEARCH:
C. Formulate Hypothesis - A hypothesis is a
theoretical statement in solving a logical relationship
between variables. It should be based on the
problem being solved.
D. Prepare the Research Design - Identify what is
the best means to collect and analyze data in the
study to clarify and improve the research problem,
purpose, and questions.
BELOW IS A DIAGRAMMATIC PRESENTATION OF
THE STEPS TAKEN WHEN DOING RESEARCH:
E. Collect Data - Use an appropriate data collection
method to elicit the needed information.
F. Analyze Data - Utilize strategies and methods that
make sense of the data to answer the research problem.
G. Interpret and report the findings - Put the
information in perspective and present the solution to the
proposed problem based on the findings of the
investigation.
ETHICS OF RESEARCH
❑ Cristobal & Cristobal (2017), in their book, “Practical Research 1 for Senior High
School”, lists the following ethical codes and policies that the researcher needs to
consider in conducting a study:
1. Honesty - The researcher should strive to truthfully report data in whatever form
of communication all throughout the study.
2. Objectivity - The researcher should avoid being biased. The study should not be
influenced by his/her personal motives, beliefs and opinions.
3. Integrity - The researcher should establish credibility through the consistency of
his/her thought and action. He/she should act with sincerity especially on keeping
agreements.
ETHICS OF RESEARCH
3. Integrity - The researcher should establish credibility through the
consistency of his/her thought and action. He/she should act with
sincerity especially on keeping agreements.
4. Care - The researcher should never neglect even the smallest
detail of the study. All information should be critically examined.
Records of research activities should be properly and securely
kept.
5. Openness - The researcher should be willing to accept criticisms
and new ideas for the betterment of the study. Research results
and findings should be shared to the public.
ETHICS OF RESEARCH
6. Respect for intellectual property - The researcher
should not plagiarize. Credit should be given to who or
where it is due. All authors cited and sources used in the
study should be properly acknowledged.
✓ Plagiarism refers to the act of illegally using another
person’s ideas, works, processes, and results. Thus, it
constitutes claiming an intellectual property as one’s own
that can be penalized through Republic Act 8293 known
as the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines.
ETHICS OF RESEARCH
7. Confidentiality - The researcher should take steps to protect all
confidential communications or documents from being discovered by
others.
8. Responsible publication - The researcher should ensure that his/her
work is clear, honest, complete, accurate, and balanced, thus avoiding
wasteful and duplicate publication. It should likewise refrain from
selective, misleading, or ambiguous reporting.
9. Responsible mentoring - The researcher should teach responsible
conduct of research and share professional knowledge and skills
especially to new or less experienced researchers.
ETHICS OF RESEARCH
10. Respect for colleagues - The researcher should show courtesy
to his/her colleagues by treating them equally and fairly.
11. Social responsibility - The researcher should promote social
good by working for the best interests and benefits of the
environment and society as a whole.
12. Non-discrimination - The researcher should not discriminate
based on sex, race, ethnicity, or any factor relating to scientific
competence and integrity. Thus, research should be open to all
people or entities who will participate in research.
ETHICS OF RESEARCH
13. Competence - The researcher should possess necessary knowledge
and skills in conducting a study. He/she should be equipped with a
sense of professionalism and expertise to ensure competent results.
14. Legality - The researcher should know and abide by relevant laws,
institutional and government policies concerning the legal conduct of
research.
15. Human Subject Protection - The researcher should protect human
lives by preventing and minimizing harms and risks. He/she should
always uphold the human dignity, privacy, and autonomy of human
subjects to be used in the study.
KINDS OF RESEARCH
1. Based on Application of Research Method
Is the research applied to theoretical or practical issues? If
it deals with concepts, principles, or abstract things, it is
pure research. This type of research aims to increase your
knowledge about something. However, if your intention is
to apply your chosen research to societal problems or
issues, finding ways to make positive changes in society,
you call your research, applied research.
KINDS OF RESEARCH
2. Based on Purpose of the Research
Depending on your objective or goal in conducting research, you do any of
these types of research: descriptive, correlational, explanatory, exploratory,
or action.
❑ Descriptive Research
This type of research aims at defining or giving a verbal portrayal or picture of
a person, thing, event, group, situation, etc. This is liable to repeated research
because its topic relates itself only to a certain period or a limited number of
years. Based on the results of your descriptive studies about a subject, you
develop the inclination of conducting further studies on such topic.
KINDS OF RESEARCH
❑Correlational Research
shows relationships or connectedness of two factors, circumstances, or
agents called variables that affect the research. It is only concerned
in indicating the existence of a relationship, not the causes and
ways of the development of such relationship.
❑Explanatory Research
This type of research elaborates or explains not just the reasons
behind the relationship of two factors, but also the ways by whicah
such relationship exists.
KINDS OF RESEARCH
❑ Exploratory Research
An exploratory research’s purpose is to find out how reasonable or
possible it is to conduct a research study on a certain topic. Here, you
will discover ideas on topics that could trigger your interest in
conducting research studies.
❑ Action Research
This type of research studies an ongoing practice of a school,
organization, community, or institution for the purpose of obtaining
results that will bring improvements in the system.
KINDS OF RESEARCH
3. Based on Types of Data Needed
The kind of data you want to work on reflects whether you wish to do quantitative or
qualitative research.
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH requires non-numerical data, which means that the
research uses words rather than numbers to express the results, the inquiry, or
investigation about people’s thoughts, beliefs, feelings, views, and lifestyles regarding
the object of the study. These opinionated answers from people are not measurable;
so, verbal language is the right way to express your findings in qualitative research.
Meanwhile, QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH involves measurement of data. Thus, it
presents research findings referring to the number or frequency of something in
numerical forms (i.e., using percentages, fractions, numbers).
KINDS OF QUALITATIVE
A. Case Study - This type of qualitative research usually takes place in the
field of social care, nursing, psychology, rehabilitation centers, education,
etc. This involves a long-time study of a person, group, organization, or
situation. 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. Varieties of data
collection methods
B. 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. A particular group
reveals the nature or characteristics of their own culture through the world
perceptions of the cultural group’s members.
KINDS OF QUALITATIVE
C. Phenomenology - refers to the study of how people find their experiences meaningful. Its
primary goal is to make people understand their experiences about death of loved ones,
care for handicapped persons, friendliness of people, etc. In doing so, other people will
likewise understand the meanings attached to their experiences. Those engaged in assisting
people to manage their own lives properly often do this qualitative kind of research.
D. 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, journals, photos, video recordings, SMS, 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 it a discourse analysis. In studying the content or structures of
the material, you need a question or a set of questions to guide you in your analysis.
KINDS OF QUALITATIVE
E. Historical Analysis - Central to this method is the examination of
primary documents to make you understand the connection of past
events to the present time. The results of your content analysis will
help you specify phenomenological changes in unchanged aspects of
society through the years.
F. Grounded Theory - Takes place when you discover a new theory to
underlie your study at the time of data collection and analysis.
Through your observation on your subjects, you will happen to find a
theory that applies to your current study. Interview, observation, and
documentary analysis are the data gathering techniques for this type
of qualitative research.
ADVANTAGES OR STRENGHTS OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

1. It adopts a naturalistic approach to its subject matter,

which means that those involve in the research
understand things based on what the 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.
ADVANTAGES OR STRENGHTS OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

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 knowledge in
interpreting verbal and visual data.
7. It offers multiple ways of acquiring and examining knowledge
about something.
DISADVANTAGES OR WEAKNESSES OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

1. It involves a lot of researcher’s subjectivity in data analysis.

2. It is hard to know the validity or 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 process, which results greatly depend on the
researcher’s views or interpretations.
RESEARCH IN DIFFERENT AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE
❑ Belonging to a certain area of discipline, you
have the option to choose one from these three
basic research approaches:
1. Positive or scientific Approach (Quantitative Data)
2. Naturalistic Approach (Qualitative Data)
3. Triangulation or Mixed method Approach
RESEARCH IN DIFFERENT AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE
➢ The scientific approach gives stress to measurable and
observable facts instead of personal views, feelings, or
attitudes. It can be used in research under the hard
sciences or STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering,
Medicine) and natural sciences (Biology, Physics,
Chemistry). The positive or scientific approach allows
control of variables or factors affecting the study. (Laursen
2010)
RESEARCH IN DIFFERENT AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE
❑ The naturalistic approach, on the other hand, is people
oriented. Data collected, in this case, represent personal
views, attitudes, thoughts, emotions, and other subjective
traits of people in a natural setting. Collecting data is
done in family homes, playground, workplaces, or schools.
In these places, people’s personal traits or qualities
naturally surface in the way they manage themselves or
interact with one another. The naturalistic approach focuses
on discovering the real concept or meaning behind
people’s lifestyles and social relations.
RESEARCH IN DIFFERENT AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE
❑ Unlike the scientific approach that makes you express and record your findings
quantitatively, which means in numerical forms, the naturalistic approach lets you
present things qualitatively through verbal language. Using words rather than
numbers as the unit of analysis, this second research approach concerns itself with
qualitative data—one type of data that exists in abundance in social sciences, which
to others exists as soft sciences. Considered as soft sciences are Anthropology,
Business, Education, Economics, Law, Politics, and all subjects aligned with business and
all those focused on helping professions such as, Nursing, Counseling, Physical
Therapy, and the like. (Babbie 2013) In the field of Humanities, man’s social life is
also subjected to research studies. However, researchers in this area give emphasis
not to man’s social life, but to the study of the meanings, significance, and
visualizations of human experiences in the fields of Fine Arts, Literature, Music,
Drama, Dance, and other artistically inclined subjects.
RESEARCHES IN THESE SUBJECTS HAPPEN IN ANY
OF THE FOLLOWING HUMANISTIC CATEGORIES:
1. Literature and Art Criticism where the researchers, using well-
chosen language and appropriate organizational pattern,
depend greatly on their interpretative and reflective thinking in
evaluating the object of their study critically.
2. Philosophical Research where the focus of inquiry is on knowledge
and principles of being and on the manner human beings
conduct themselves on earth.
3. Historical Research where the investigation centers on events and
ideas that took place in man’s life at a particular period.
HARD SCIENCE & SOFT SCIENCE
➢ Just like in other subjects under soft sciences such as
marketing, man’s thoughts and feelings still take center
stage in any research studies. The purposes of any
researches in any of these two areas in business are to
increase man’s understanding of the truths in line with
markets and marketing activities, making him more
intelligent in arriving at decisions about these aspects of
his life. Research types that are useful for these areas are
the basic and applied research. (Feinberg 2013)
HARD SCIENCE & SOFT SCIENCE
❑ A quantitative or qualitative kind of research is
not exclusive to hard sciences or soft sciences. These
two research methods can go together in a research
approach called triangulation or mixed method
approach. This is the third approach to research
that allows a combination or a mixture of research
designs, data collection and data analysis
techniques.
HARD SCIENCE & SOFT SCIENCE
❑ Thus, there is no such thing as a clear dichotomy
between qualitative and quantitative research methods
because some authorities on research claim that a
symbiotic relationship, in which they reinforce or strengthen
each other, exists between these two research methods.
Moreover, any form of knowledge, factual or opinionated,
and any statistical or verbal expression of this knowledge
are deduced from human experience that by nature is
subjective. (Hollway 2013; Letherby 2013)
REFERENCES
PRACTICAL RESEARCH 1, Esther L. Baraceros (Rex Bookstore, First Edition)
https://sites.google.com/deped.gov.ph/practicalresearch120232024/chapte
r-2/description-and-importanceof-qualitative-research