THE CHARACTERISTICS,

PROCESSES, AND ETHICS OF LESSON 2

RESEARCH
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INTENDED LEARNING
OUTCOMES
After this lesson, you should be able to:
1. widen your vocabulary through contextual clues;
2. examine things appealing to senses to hone your investigative thinking;
3. discuss the characteristics of research;
4. classify research based on a set of criteria;
5. differentiate the various types of research; and
6. describe completed or published research studies based on concepts learned about
research.
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DOING A RESEARCH IN
COLLEGE
Meaning of Research
In college, you involve yourself in varied school activities such as
academic contests, sports fests, elocution contest, music festivals,
college week celebrations, art exhibits, research work, debate
competitions, and many more.
All of these activities are aimed to let you develop a well-rounded
personality. But one or two of them gave emphasis in honing a
particular ability (e.g., making you excel in mathematics, science,
arts, music, and many more).
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One school activity that every college student has to excel in is research. This
is a hallmark of a university or college education.
Your research abilities reflect the quality of your school. If you graduate from
a school with superb knowledge of research work, you can tell yourself that,
“I am a product of a quality college or university.”
Hence, the greatness of a higher education institution depends on how
knowledgeable its faculty and students are about the ins and outs of research;
more so, on the application of this to their everyday life for the progress of the
whole world.
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WHAT IS RESEARCH?
Research is a process of executing various mental acts for discovering and
examining facts and information to prove the accuracy or truthfulness of your
claims or conclusions about the topic of your research.
Research requires you to inquire or investigate about your chosen research
topic by asking questions that will make you engage yourself in top-level
thinking strategies of interpreting, analyzing, synthesizing, criticizing,
appreciating, or creating to enable you to discover truths about the many
things you tend to wonder about the topic of your research work. (Litchman
2013)

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Research 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.
Each stage of the research process is not an individual task because the
knowledge you obtain through each stage comes not only from yourself but
other people as well. Thus, similar to inquiry, research involves cooperative
learning.
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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.
You have to collect facts or information, study such data, and
come up with a solution to the problem based on the results of
your analysis.
It is a process requiring you to work logically or systematically
and collaboratively with others.
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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 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.

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CHARACTERISTICS 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

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PURPOSES OF RESEARCH
1. To learn how to work independently
2. To learn how to work scientifically or systematically
3. To have an in-depth knowledge of something
4. To elevate your mental abilities by letting you think in higher-
order thinking strategies (HOTS) of inferring, evaluating,
synthesizing, appreciating, applying, and creating

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PURPOSES OF RESEARCH
5. To improve your reading and writing skills
6. To be familiar with the basic tools of research and the various
techniques of gathering data and of presenting research findings
7. To free yourself, to a certain extent, from the domination or
strong influence of a single textbook or of the professor’s lone
viewpoint or spoon feeding

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TYPES 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 a pure research. This
type of re-search 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.

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TYPES 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.
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A. 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.

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B. CORRELATIONAL
RESEARCH
A 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.

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C. EXPLANATORY
RESEARCH
This type of research elaborates or
explains not just the reasons behind
the relationship of two factors, but
also the ways by which such
relationship exists.
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D. 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.
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E. 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.
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TYPES OF RESEARCH

3. BASED ON TYPES OF DATA

NEEDED
The kind of data you want to work on
reflects whether you wish to do a
quantitative or a qualitative research.
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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 a qualitative research.
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QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

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).
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The data you deal with in research are either primary or secondary
data.
PRIMARY DATA are obtained through direct observation or
contact with people, objects, artifacts, paintings, etc. Primary data
are new and original information resulting from your sensory
experience.
However, if such data have already been written about or reported
on and are available for reading purposes, they exist as
SECONDARY DATA.
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APPROACHES TO RESEARCH
After choosing your topic for research, what is your next
move?
In other words, how are you going to approach or
begin your research, deal with your data, and
establish a connection among all things or activities
involved in your research?
There are three approaches that you can choose from.

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1. SCIENTIFIC OR POSITIVE
APPROACH
The first is the scientific or positive approach, in which you
discover and measure information as well as observe and control
variables in an impersonal manner. It allows control of variables.
Therefore, the data gathering techniques appropriate for this
approach are structured interviews, questionnaires, and
observational checklists.
Data given by these techniques are expressed through numbers,
which means that this method is suitable for quantitative research.

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2. NATURALISTIC APPROACH
The second approach is the naturalistic approach. In contrast to the scientific
approach that uses numbers to express data, the naturalistic approach uses
words.
This research approach directs you to deal with qualitative data that speak of
how people behave toward their surroundings. These are non-numerical data
that express truths about the way people perceive or understand the world.
Since people look at their world in a subjective or personal basis in an
uncontrolled or unstructured manner, a naturalistic approach happens in a
natural setting.
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3. TRIANGULATION
APPROACH
Is it possible to plan your research activities based on these two approaches?
Combining these two approaches in designing your research leads you to the
third one, called triangulation approach.
In this case, you are free to gather and analyze data using multiple methods,
allowing you to combine or mix up research approaches, research types, data
gathering, and data analysis techniques.
Triangulation approach gives you the opportunity to view every angle of
the research from different perspectives. (Badke 2012; Silverman 2013)

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ETHICS IN RESEARCH

Ethics generally is considered to deal with

beliefs about what is right or wrong, proper
or improper, good or bad. According to a
dictionary definition (Webster‘s 1968), to
be ethical is to conform to accepted
professional practice.
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ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
IN CONDUCTING RESEARCH
1. Objectivity and integrity
2. Respect of the research subjects‘ right to privacy and dignity
and protection of subjects from personal harm
3. Presentation of research findings
4. Misuse of research role
5. Acknowledgement of research collaboration and assistance
6. Distortions of findings by sponsor
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UNETHICAL PRACTICES IN
CONDUCTING RESEARCH
1. Deceiving a respondent about the true purpose of a study
2. Asking a respondent questions that cause him or her extreme
embarrassment; guilt emotional turmoil by remaining him or her of an
unpleasant experience
3. Invading the privacy of a respondent
4. Studying the respondents or research subjects without their knowledge
5. When analyzing the data—revealing only part of the facts, presenting facts
out of context, falsifying findings or offering misleading presentation such as
lying with statistics
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