UNIT II

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AND

ITS IMPORTANCE IN DAILY LIFE
 LESSON 3

QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH
Intended Learning Outcomes
After this lesson, you should be able to:
1. Clarify your understanding of qualitative
research
2. Explain the elements or characteristic of
qualitative research
3. Justify the usefulness of qualitative research
4. Compare and contrast the types of
qualitative research
What is qualitative research
This is a research type that puts
premium or high value on
people’s thinking or point of
view conditioned by their
personal traits.
Characteristic of a qualitative
research
1. Human understanding and interpretation
Data analysis results show an
individual’s mental , social,
and spiritual understanding of
the world.
2. active, powerful, and forceful
A lot of changes occur continuously in
stage of qualitative research.
You are not fixated to a certain plan.
rather, you are inclined to discover your
qualitative research design as your
study gradually unfolds or reveals itself
in accordance with your research
objectives
3. Multiple research approaches and methods
Qualitative research allows
you to approach or plan your
study in varied ways.
4. Specificity to generalization
Specific ideas in a
quantitative research are
directed to a general
understanding of something.
It follows an inductive or
scientific method of thinking
5. contextualization
A qualitative research involves
all variables, factors, or
conditions affecting the study.
Your goal here is to understand
the human behavior.
6. Diversified data in real-life situations
A qualitative research 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
observation
7. Abounds with words and visuals
 words, words, and more words
come in a big quantity in this kind
of research
Data gathering through interviews
or library reading, as well as the
presentation of data analysis
results, is done verbally.
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 on your study
Types 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.
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.
2. ethnography
Falling in the field of
anthropology, ethnography is
the study of a particular cultural
group to get clear understanding
of its organizational set-up,
internal operation, and lifestyle
3. phenomenology
Coming from the word “phenomenon”,
which means something known through
sensory experience, 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.
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,
journals, photos, video recording online
messages, emails, audio-visual materials ,
etc.) used by a person, group, organization,
or any institution in communicating.
5. Historical analysis
Central to this qualitative
research method is the
examination of primary
documents to make you
understand the connection of
past events to the present time.
6. Grounded theory
Grounded theory takes place
when you discover a new
theory to underlie your study
at the time of data collection
and analysis.
Advantages or strengths 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 they find
meaningful
2. It promotes a full
understanding of human
behavior 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
include 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
processes, which results
greatly depend on the
researcher’s views or
interpretation