Practical Research 1

Qualitative and its

Importance in Daily Life
Week 2
Learning Goals
The Learner should:
• describe characteristics, strengths, weaknesses,
and kinds of qualitative research
• illustrate the importance of qualitative research
across fields
• provide examples of research in areas of interest
(arts, humanities, sports,, science, business,
agriculture and fisheries, information and
communication technology, and social inquiry)
Content Standards
The learner demonstrates understanding of:
• the value of qualitative research, its
kinds, characteristics, strengths, and
weaknesses
• the importance of qualitative research
across fields of inquiry
Introduction
Around you are different people, things,
and places. All these vary from one
another as regards character or qualities.
You are inclined to conduct a qualitative
research to discover such individual’s
thoughts, feelings, and attitudes about a
certain topic or to find out something.
Introduction
To discover facts and information about
the object of your interest is to work
collaboratively with some people, for the
answers to your questions about your
topic do not come only from yourself but
from others as well.
Here lies the importance of qualitative
research.
Motivational Questions

At this point of your life,

how will you describe life
as the greatest blessing
you’ve ever received?
Qualitative Research
Lesson Presentation
What is QUALITATIVE RESEARCH?
• Cresswell (1994) as cited in Carey, Naval, &
Prieto (2017) defined this as “an inquiry process
of understanding a social or human problem
based in building a complex holistic picture
formed with words, reporting detailed views of
informants and conducted in a natural setting.”
 What is QUALITATIVE RESEARCH?
• Qualitative research is “to understand a
particular social situation, event, role, group,
or interaction.”-Locke, Spirduso and
Silverman (1987)
• Qualitative researchers are interested in
“understanding how things occur.” -Franenkel
and Wallen (1990)
 What is QUALITATIVE RESEARCH?
• It is essentially a descriptive analysis and
follows the inductive process of reasoning,
that is, from specific situations,
• Its research participants are selected
purposefully and it is conducted in the
participant/s’ natural setting.
• It utilizes “soft data” (i.e. data in forms of
impressions, words, sentences, photos, and
symbols).
Qualitative Research Methods
• Participant Observation
• Observation
• In-depth Interviewing
• Focus Group Interviewing
• Content Analysis
• Narratology
• Films, Videos, and Photographs
Types of Qualitative Research
Ethnography
• In ethnography, you immerse yourself in the
target participants’ environment to
understand the goals, cultures, challenges,
motivations, and themes that emerge.
• The focus is on the study of cultures,
traditions, and race of a society
Types of Qualitative Research
Narrative
• The narrative approach weaves together a
sequence of events, usually from just one or
two individuals to form a cohesive story.
• You conduct in-depth interviews, read
documents, and look for themes; in other
words, how does an individual story illustrate
the larger life influences that created it. 
Types of Qualitative Research
Phenomenology
• When you want to describe an event,
activity, or phenomenon, the aptly named
phenomenological study is an appropriate
qualitative method.
Phenomenology
• In a phenomenological study, you use a
combination of methods, such as conducting
interviews, reading documents, watching
videos, or visiting places and events, to
understand the meaning participants place
on whatever’s being examined. You rely on
the participants’ own perspectives to provide
insight into their motivations.
Types of Qualitative Research
Case Study
• A case study involves a deep
understanding through multiple types of
data sources. Case studies can be
explanatory, exploratory, or describing
an event. 
• It is more in-depth than phenomenology
Types of Qualitative Research
Grounded Theory
• Whereas a phenomenological study looks to
describe the essence of an activity or event,
grounded theory looks to provide an
explanation or theory behind the events. You
use primarily interviews and existing
documents to build a theory based on the
data.
Summary of
Types of
Qualitative
Research
Characteristics of
Qualitative Research
• The research takes place in a natural setting (e.g.
home, office, institution, community). This
enables the researcher to be immersed in the
actual experiences of the research participants
and to get as much detailed data as s/he needs.
• The focus of qualitative research is on the
participants’ perceptions and experiences and
the way they make sense of their lives (Fraenkel
and Wallen, 1988)
Characteristics of
Qualitative Research
• The methods are interactive and humanistic,
call for active participation of research
participants, and on the part of the
researcher, sensitivity to the needs of the
participants.
• It uses various ways of collecting data:
observation, structured or semi-structured
interviews, documents, e-mails, blogs,
videos, stills, etc.
• Its results being emergent, new discoveries
during the data gathering procedure can lead
to a total revision of research questions,
among others.
• It is fundamentally interpretative.
• The researcher is the primary instrument in
data collection.
Advantages of Qualitative Research
• It adopts a naturalistic approach to its subject
matter which means that the participants are
involved in real settings.
• It promotes a full understanding of human
behavior or personality traits in their natural
setting.
• It is instrumental for positive societal
changes
Advantages of Qualitative Research
• It engenders respect for people’s
individuality as it demands the researcher’s
careful and attentive stand toward people’s
world views.
• It is a way of understanding and interpreting
social interactions.
• It offers multiple ways of acquiring and
examining knowledge about something
Advantages of Qualitative Research

• 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.
• It can offer the best light on or best answers
to certain phenomena
Disadvantages of
Qualitative Research
• It involves a lot of researcher’s subjectivity in
data analysis.
• It is hard to know the validity or reliability of
the data.
• Its open-ended questions yield “data
overload” that requires long-time analysis
• It is time consuming.
Disadvantages of
Qualitative Research

• It involves several processes which

results greatly depend on the
researcher’s views or interpretations.
• Total immersion in the natural setting of
the research can be time consuming and
tedious, and resource-draining as well.
Qualitative Analysis
• The non-numerical nature of qualitative
data (e.g. interviews and observations,
documents, books, films, or videos) calls
for non-numerical methods or
procedures of organization, analysis,
and interpretation.
Qualitative Analysis
• These usually consist of reducing data to
understandable form, conceptualizing or
elaborating categories in terms of desired
properties and dimensions taking into
considerations the objectives of the study.
Qualitative Analysis
• Coding means not merely attaching numbers
to identify a term but it is a process of
reviewing notes and discovering common
patterns out of the textual notes,.
– Example: If we look at our clothing cabinet, we
see that there we arrange our clothes according
to some categories such as socks, underwear,
shirts, pants, etc.
Qualitative Research
across Different Fields
In Education
• Ethnographic studies of learning and
knowledge in education ask the question
what counts as knowledge and learning in
classrooms to teachers and students
(e.g. how teaching styles match the learning
styles of students)
Qualitative Research
across Different Fields
In Technical Communication
• Qualitative methodologies determine the
effective use of technology in the workplace
to entire smooth flow of communication.
• Focus groups are used to probe deeper
research results in order to describe or
illustrate current practices in Technical
Communication
Qualitative Research
across Different Fields
In Psychology
• Psychology has been strongly shaped by the
behavioral and cognitive traditions, within
which psychology should seek to understand
and determine an observable, objective
psychological reality (e.g. psychologists seek
to understand why some students lack
motivation
Qualitative Research
across Different Fields
In Advertising
• The character of qualitative research makes it
and its associated methods extremely useful
for uncovering complex consumer insights
that can lead to a successful advertising.
Qualitative Research
across Different Fields
In Marketing
• Influenced by social research, marketing
researchers embedded projective devices
within the approach of in-depth interview.
They created devices such as matching
people, animals, cars, pictorial symbols, and
soliciting dreams.
Qualitative Research
across Different Fields
In Economics
• Quantitative research can predict population
growth or plot the fluctuations of a country’s
gross national product, but qualitative
research will focus on the everyday struggle
of large poor families to get out of poverty
Qualitative Research
across Different Fields
In Health Sciences
• Quantitative research may be able to tell how
many people in the world suffer from
HIV/AIDS, cancer, or other debilitating
diseases, but only qualitative research can
capture their pain and suffering, how they
cope up, or how they try to keep on living
Integration
For “Whoever desires to love life
and see good days, let him keep
his tongue from evil and his lips
from speaking deceit.”
1 Peter 3:10
Integration
Answer the following:
1. Have you ever desired
something that would be a
benefit to your life? What was
that “thing” that you desired?
Did you ever obtain the
“thing” that you desired?
Integration

Answer the following:

2. Do you consider doing research
is something that our lives would
desire? Explain your point.
Assessment
Based on your understanding of
the nature of qualitative research,
cite some problem areas in daily
life that you think qualitative
research can address.
References
• Prieto, N., Naval, V. and Carey, T. (2017).
Practical Research 1 for Senior High School.
Quezon City, Metro Manila: Lorimar
Publishing, Inc.
• Baraceros, E. L. (2019). Practical Research 1.
Sampaloc, Manila: Rex Bookstore Inc.