The importance of

Quantitative
Research across
fields.
PREPARED BY: CHRISTIAN PAUL C. GUTIERREZ
 Importance of Research
Research is of great value to people. Through
research, the quality of man’s life has
improved from conventional to modern. It
has made life richer and more meaningful.
Through research, people have found ways
to augment their income and alleviate
poverty. The following are some of the values
of research to people.
 Research improves quality of life. Research has led man
in his search for ways to improve his life. A teacher-
researcher who conducts research with return on
investment (ROI) will find ways to make his research
output profitable. For instance, the owner of Mang lnasal
conducted a preliminary experimental research on
inasal chicken and pork. Mang lnasal started small scale
in Iloilo City and has now become big and famous, with
many branches throughout the country. From poor and
humble beginnings, the owner of Mang lnasal rose to the
rank of multibillionaire through acceptable, salable, and
profitable research output.
 Research improves instruction and students’
achievements. Research has no beginning and no end.
It is a never-ending task. MODERN TEACHERS who are
research-oriented and scientific continually conduct
research on the effectiveness of teaching strategies,
methods, approaches, and techniques that best suit the
learning competencies of students. In other words,
MODERN TEACHERS are in constant search for ways to
improve instruction that ultimately leads to higher
achievements by students. Hence, everybody passes
the Professional Regulation Commission’s (PRC)
Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET).
 Research reduces the burden of work. Modern
technology gadgets, tools, appliances—are all
products of research—are available everywhere.
Whether they are used at home or in the office,
these modern technologies like computer, rice
cooker, washing machine, vacuum cleaner, gas
range, cellular phone, web camera, copier
machine, fax machines, and many others all cut
the time a person performs his daily tasks. In short,
they reduce man’s burden of work.
 Research satisfies man’s needs. In the 19th century, the
needs of man were not as fully satisfied as they are today.
Man lived in conventional way of living. There were no
concrete homes and conveniences like air conditioning,
freezers, refrigerators, no electricity to run the appliances, no
communication facilities, no television nor movie houses.
There were no modes of land transportation. Air travel like
airplane was unheard of. There were no infrastructures like
bridges But due to products of research, man’s
conventional ways of living have changed to modern ways.
All modes of transportation like airplanes and vehicles were
invented to satisfy man's needs to travel other places;
electrification has been discovered to satisfy man’s needs
 Research improves the exportation of food
products. Through research, exportation of food
products has improved. It has made the global
commercialization of local products possible.
Philippine products being exported are frozen
yellow fin tuna, frozen headless shrimp and prawn
(sugpo), dried Eucheuma (seaweed), mangoes,
bananas, canned pineapple, canned crab meat,
frozen boneless milkfish, frozen nemipterid fillet,
frozen crevalle fillet, frozen tilapia fillet, and many
others.
 Research improves teacher’s competence. Through
research, teacher’s competence can be improved by
using innovative teaching techniques, strategies,
methods, and approaches to deliver the goods and
services to students effectively, efficiently, and
excellently. They always conduct research to improve
their competence, especially with the new
implementation of K to 12. As a result of their research,
students achievement can be improved because
graduates of grade 12 or senior high school are
expected to be self—employed or employed in
different industries of the country and can compete
globally with other graduates abroad.
Research responds to the country‘s effort as
economic recovery. By and large, the
Philippines is rich in master’s and doctorate
graduates. Some even avail thesis and
dissertation grants, but majority of their
theses and dissertations fall under descriptive
research with no return on investment (ROI).
Nobody buys their research outputs and they
only exhaust government’s research budget
Research trains graduates to respond to the
socioeconomic development of the society
and to compete globally. Teachers should
adopt innovative teaching techniques using
modern technology in order to produce
graduates who can respond to the
socioeconomic needs of the country and
are equipped with skills and competencies
necessary for global competitiveness.
Research makes the country great again. If
all Filipinos are research-oriented, like the
businesses owners of SM (shoe Mart),
Jollibee, Goldilocks, Mang Inasal, Chowking
and many others.
 People do research to find solutions, even
tentative ones, to problems, in order to improve or
enhance ways of doing things, to disprove or
provide a new hypothesis, or simply to find answers
to questions or solutions to problems in daily life..
Research findings can affect people’s lives, ways
of doing things, laws, rules and regulations, as
well as policies, among others. Quantitative
research, because of its emphasis on proof, rather
than discovery, has been widely used in most
disciplines.
 In the natural and social sciences, quantitative research
is the systematic, empirical investigation of observable
phenomena via statistical, mathematical or
computational techniques. The objective of quantitative
research is to develop and employ mathematical
models, theories and/or hypotheses pertaining to
phenomena. The process of measurement is central to
quantitative research because it provides the
fundamental connection between empirical observation
and mathematical expression of quantitative
relationships.
Health Sciences (Medical
Technology, Dentistry, Nursing,
Medicine, etc.) use quantitative
research designs like the descriptive,
pre—experimental, quasi-
experimental, } true experiment,
case study, among others.
 Quantitative Research Across Disciplines
Quantitative Research and Anthropology
Bernard (1994) says that there are five steps to
follow in conducting true experiments
with people:
1. You need at least two groups, called the
treatment group (or the intervention group or the
stimulus group) and the control group. One group
gets the intervention (a new drug, for example),
and the other group (the control group) doesn’t.
 2.Individuals must be randomly assigned, either to
the intervention group or to the control group to
ensure that the groups are equivalent. Some
individuals in a population may be more religious, or
more wealthy, or less sickly, or more prejudiced than
others, but random assignment ensures that those
traits are randomly distributed through the groups in
an experiment. The degree to which randomization
ensures equivalence, however, depends on the size
of the groups created. With random assignment,
two groups of 50 are more equivalent than four
groups of 25.
3. The groups are measured on one
or more dependent variables
(income, infant mortality, attitude
toward abortion, knowledge of
curing techniques, or other things
you hope to change by the
intervention); this is called the
pretest.
4. The intervention (the
independent variable) is
introduced.
5. The dependent variables are
measured again. This is the
posttest.
 True Experiments in the Lab
Bernard further says that true experiments with people are
common in laboratory experiments and in the testing of new
medicines. Laboratory experiments often produce results that beg
to be tested in the natural world by anthropologists. Aaron and
Mills (1959, as cited in Bernard, 1994) demonstrated in a lab
experiment that people who go through severe initiation to a
group tend to be more positive toward the group than
are people who go through a mild initiation. They reasoned that
people who go through tough initiation rites put a lot of personal
investment into getting into the group. Later, if people see
evidence that the group is not what they thought it would be, they
are reluctant to admit the fact because of the investment.
 True Experiments in the Field
When they are done outside the lab, experiments are called field
experiments. Janet Schofield and her colleagues did a 3-year
ethnographic study of a middle school. During the first year, they
noticed that African-American and white children seemed to react
differently to “mildly aggressive acts”-things like bumping in the
hallway, poking one another in the classroom, asking for food, or
using another student’s pencil without permission. There appeared
to be no event of racial conflict in the school, but during
interviews white students were more likely to report being
intimidated by their African—American peers than vice versa
(Sagar & Schofield, 1980, as cited in Bernard, 1994).
 Quasi-Experiments
Quasi—experiments are most often used in evaluating
social programs. Suppose a researcher has invented a
technique for improving reading comprehension among
third graders. She/he selects two third-grade classes in a
school district. One of them gets the intervention and the
other doesn’t. Students are measured before and after the
intervention to see whether their reading scores improve.
This design contains many of the elements of a true
experiment, but the participants are not assigned
randomly to the treatment and control groups. (Bernard,
1994).
 The One-Shot Case Study, or One-Group
Posttest Only Design
In the one-shot case study design, a single group of individuals is measured
on some dependent variable after an intervention has taken place. The
researcher tries to evaluate the experiment by interviewing people (0) and
trying to assess the impact of the intervention (X). The problem, of course, is-
that you can’t be sure that what you observe is the result of some particular
intervention. In the 19503, physicians began general use of the Pap Test, a
simple procedure for determining the presence of cervical cancer. Following
the introduction of the Pap Test, measurements were made for several years to
see if there was any effect. Sure enough, cervical cancer rates dropped and
dropped. Later, it was noticed that cervical cancer rates had been dropping
steadily since the 1930s. Of course, early detection of any cancer is important
in fighting the disease. But the data from the 19303 and 19408 show that,
initially at least, the Pap Test was not responsible for lower rates of cervical
cancer (Williams, 1978, as cited in Bernard, 1994).
 The Two-Group Posttest Only Design
For this research design, Bernard (1994) cites this example:
Consider two villages in the same cultural region; one village has
experienced a major intervention (tourism, a factory, an irrigation
system) while the other villages have not. You measure a series of
variables (income, attitudes toward the national government, the
amount of time women spend in child-rearing activities) in both
villages. These are 01 and 02. If the differences between 01 and 02
are small, you can’t tell if the intervention, X, caused those
differences. This design is quite convincing , though, when the
differences between 01 and 02 are large and where you have lots
of participant observation data to back up the claim that the
intervention is responsible for those differences.
 The One—Group Pretest—Posttest Design
In the one-group pretest-posttest design, some
variables are measured (observed), then the
intervention takes place, and then the variables are
measured again. This takes care of some of the
problems associated with the one-shot case study, but
doesn’t eliminate the threats of history, testing,
maturation, selection, and mortality. Most importantly,
if there is a significant difference in the pretest and
posttest measurements, we can’t tell if the intervention
made that difference happen. (Bernard, 1994).
Quantitative Research and Communication
Researchers are often interested in how an
understanding of a particular communication
phenomenon might be generalized to a larger
population. For example, researchers can advance
questions like “What effect do punitive behavioural
control statements have on a classroom? What
communicative behaviors are associated with
different stages in a romantic relationship? What
communicative behaviors are used to respond to co-
workers displaying emotional stress? (Allen, Titsworth,
Hunt, 2009).
Quantitative Research and Sports Medicine
A quantitative research done by the University of
Eastern Finland investigated the relationship
between the mushrooming of fast food chains and
obesity of children, as well as the intervention
needed to prevent the children’s obesity from
reaching serious proportions.
The research studied 410 children, with ages
ranging from six to eight years old from Kuopio,
Eastern Finland.
 The researchers focused on the children’s physical
activity and physical inactivity and the concomitant
impact on the children’s amount of adipose tissue
(fat mass) and endurance fitness. The study showed
that children who did strenuous exercise for 10
minutes daily had 26-30% less adipose tissue than
their peers who were physically inactive. It had also
been found out that even light physical activity for
the equivalent time of passive sitting reduced the
children’s adipose tissue by 13%. The study
concluded that physical activity affects effectively
the children's weight control.
Quantitative Research and Medical Education
Experimental research designs may enhance the
quality of medical education. Said designs test
interventions like curriculum, teaching-learning
process, or assessment with an experimental group.
Either a comparison or controlled group of learners
may allow researchers to overcome validity concerns
and infer potential cause-effect generalizations.
When designing their own or evaluating other
researchers’ studies, researchers must always keep in
mind internal and external validity concerns.
 The selection of a research design for any study
should be within the parameters of the research
questions as stated in the problem statement or
hypothesis. In quantitative research, the findings will
reflect the reliability and validity (psychometric
characteristics of the measured outcomes or
dependent variables such as changes in
knowledge, skill or attitudes used to assess the
effectiveness of medical education intervention or
the independent variable of interest.
Quantitative Research and the Behavioral Sciences
Contemporary quantitative scholars are interested in two types of
questions:
1. Questions of relationships and
2. Questions of differences
Relationship questions tend to explore how one behavior exhibited
by people is related to other types of behavior. Examples are
verbally aggressive behaviors related to physical aggression-that is,
when a person has high level of verbally aggressive behavior,
does he or she tend to be physically aggressive? Are certain
supervisor communication skills related to the emotional
experiences of employees?
 Questions of difference explore how patterns of behavior or
perceptions might differ from one group or type of person to
another: Do people with disabilities experience emotional labor
differently from those without disabilities? Do women perceive
talkativeness (or lack of it) differently from men? Do
communication styles differ from one culture to the next? (Allen,
Titsworth, Hunt, 2009).
When quantitative researchers explore questions of differences
or questions of relationships, they do so in an attempt to uncover
certain patterns of behavior. If the researcher discovers that a
certain relationship exists in a sample that she or he has drawn
from the population, she/he is then in a position to draw
generalizations about patterns expected of human behavior.
Quantitative Research in Education and Psychology
Mertens (2005) says that the dominant paradigms that
guided early educational and psychological research were
positivism and its successor, post positivism. Positivism is based
on the rationalistic, empiricist philosophy that originated with
Aristotle, Francis Bacon, John Locke, August Comte“, and
lmmanuel Kant. The underlying assumptions of positivism
include the belief that the social world can be studied in the
same way as the natural world, that there is a method for
studying the social world that is value-free, and
that explanations of a causal nature can be provided. The
following table was done by Doren, Bullis, and Benz, 1996, as
cited in Mertens, 2005, to illustrate this view of positivism:
Quantitative Research and the Social Sciences
Quantitative approaches are typically associated with positivist
perspectives in social research. Hammersley (1993, as cited in
Henn, Weinstein, Foard, 2006) provides a useful definition of this
approach:
The term ‘quantitative method' refers to the adoption of the
natural science experiments as the model for scientific research,
its key features being quantitative measurement of the
phenomena studied and systematic control of the theoretical
variables influencing those problems.