Holy Rosary College of Santa Rosa Laguna, Inc.

Tagapo, City of Santa Rosa, Laguna

Practical Research 1
Grade 11
Third Quarter / Second Semester
Week4
Mary Rose T. Cervantes
rose.cervantes@hrcsrl.edu.ph

Chapter2. Determining Qualitative Research Design

Lesson4. Research Design

Lesson Description:
This lesson introduces you to the five (5) most common types of qualitative research in
the social sciences and humanities and their usefulness in everyday life, their characteristics,
strengths and weaknesses.
Lesson Objectives:
After this lesson, the students will be able to learn how to do the following:
1. Describe the five most common types of qualitative research designs
2. Determine the usefulness and appropriateness of each type

Narrative research is an umbrella term encompassing methodologies that rely on spoken or

written words. Narrative research usually focuses on one or two individuals. The aim is to tell a
story of individual experiences through the identification and interpretation of patterns of
meaning. This form of research explores expressed experiences in lived and told stories of
individuals. As narratives always occur within specific situations, narrative research also tries to
consider the social and cultural narratives in which individual experiences take place. Stories, as
the main unit of analysis, are gathered through various data sources.
Narrative Research Characteristics
1. Incorporates context and place in the story
2. Is collaborative (researcher & participants construct the narrative together)
3. Always involves responding to the question, “And then what happened?” 
Narrative Research Techniques
1. Restorying Narrative analysis
2. Oral history Artifacts
3. Storytelling Letter
4. writing Autobiographical and biographical writing
Phenomenology is a form of qualitative research that focuses on the study of an individual’s
lived experiences within the world. Although it is a powerful approach for inquiry, the nature of
this methodology is often intimidating to HPE researchers.
 It is an approach to qualitative research that focuses on the commonality of a lived
experience within a particular group. The fundamental goal of the approach is to arrive at
a description of the nature of the particular phenomenon
 Typically, interviews are conducted with a group of individuals who have first-hand
knowledge of an event, situation or experience. The interview(s) attempts to answer two
broad questions (Moustakas, 1994): What have you experienced in terms of the
phenomenon? What contexts or situation have typically influenced your experiences of
the phenomenon (Creswell, 2013)?  Other forms of data such as documents, observations
and art may also be used.

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 Holy Rosary College of Santa Rosa Laguna, Inc.
Tagapo, City of Santa Rosa, Laguna

 The data is then read and reread and culled for like phrases and themes that are then
grouped to form clusters of meaning (Creswell, 2013). Through this process the
researcher may construct the universal meaning of the event, situation or experience and
arrive at a more profound understanding of the phenomenon.
Two Types of Phenomenology
1. Descriptive
2. Interpretive

Grounded theory refers to a set of systematic inductive methods for conducting qualitative

research aimed toward theory development.
The term grounded theory denotes dual referents:
(a) A method consisting of flexible methodological strategies and
(b) The products of this type of inquiry. Increasingly, researchers use the term to mean the
methods of inquiry for collecting and, in particular, analyzing data.
 The methodological strategies of grounded theory are aimed to construct middle-
level theories directly from data analysis. The inductive theoretical thrust of these
methods is central to their logic. The resulting analyses build their power on strong
empirical foundations.
 These analyses provide focused, abstract, conceptual theories that explain the studied
empirical phenomena.
Grounded theory has considerable significance because it
(A) Provides explicit, sequential guidelines for conducting qualitative research;
(B) offers specific strategies for handling the analytic phases of inquiry;
(c) Streamlines and integrates data collection and analysis;
(d) Advances conceptual analysis of qualitative data; and
(e) Legitimizes qualitative research as scientific inquiry. Grounded theory methods have
earned their place as a standard social research method and have influenced researchers from
varied disciplines and professions.

Ethnography is a type of qualitative research that gathers observations, interviews and

documentary data to produce detailed and comprehensive accounts of different social
phenomena.
When to Use Ethnography Research
Ethnographic research should be used in the early stages of user-focused systematic
investigations. This is because ethnography research helps you to gather useful information
about the dispositions, goals, and habits of the research variables in specific contexts. 
Ethnography research is most suitable for complex research processes especially in markets
and customer settings. In market research, ethnography allows organizations to gain insights into
consumer habits and receive first-hand feedback on the extent to which their product or service
meets the needs of target markets.

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 Holy Rosary College of Santa Rosa Laguna, Inc.
Tagapo, City of Santa Rosa, Laguna

 This research design is also useful for examining social behaviours and interactions. It
is extremely beneficial in the study employees' disposition to organizational work culture
and policies. 
 While ethnographic research helps businesses bridge product gaps and improve
consumers' experience, there are certain situations where this research design is counter-
productive. Ethnographic research should not be used in processes that require
statistically valid analysis, test-runs or group comparisons. 

A case study is a research methodology that has commonly used in social sciences.
 A case study is a research strategy and an empirical inquiry that investigates a
phenomenon within its real-life context.
 Case studies are based on an in-depth investigation of a single individual, group or event
to explore the causes of underlying principles.
 A case study is a descriptive and exploratory analysis of a person, group or event.
 A case study research can be single or multiple case studies, includes quantitative
evidence, relies on multiple sources of evidence and benefits from the prior development
of theoretical propositions.
Case studies are analysis of persons, groups, events, decisions, periods, policies, institutions or
other systems that are studied holistically by one or more methods.
Strengths of Case Studies
1. Provides detailed (rich qualitative) information.
2. Provides insight for further research.
3. Permitting investigation of otherwise impractical (or unethical) situations.
Limitations of Case Studies
1. Lacking scientific rigour and providing little basis for generalization of results to the
wider population.
2. Researchers' own subjective feeling may influence the case study (researcher bias).
3. Difficult to replicate.
4. Time-consuming and expensive.
5. The volume of data, together with the time restrictions in place, impacted on the depth of
analysis that was possible within the available resources.

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