Lesson 4: Qualitative Research

• Qualitative Research


  • involves collecting and analyzing non-numerical data (e.g., text, video, or audio) to understand concepts, opinions, or experiences
  • can be used to gather in-depth insights into a problem or generate new ideas for research
• Qualitative research


  commonly used in the humanities and social sciences, in subjects such as anthropology, sociology, education, health sciences, history, etc.
• Quantitative Research


  • Focuses on testing hypotheses and theories
  • Analyzed through math and statistical analysis
  • Mainly expressed in numbers, graphs and tables
  • Requires many respondents
  • Closed (multiple choice) questions
• Qualitative Research


  • Focuses on exploring ideas and formulating a theory or hypothesis
  • Analyzed by summarizing, categorizing and interpreting
  • Mainly expressed in words
  • Requires few respondents
  • Open-ended questions
• Characteristics of Qualitative Research

  1. Human understanding and interpretation
  2. Active, powerful, and forceful
  3. Multiple research approaches and methods
  4. Specificity to generalization
  5. Contextualization
  6. Diversified data in real-life situations
  7. Bounds with words and visuals
  8. Internal Analysis
• Human understanding and interpretation


  Data analysis results show an individual’s mental, social, and spiritual understanding of the world. His values, beliefs, likes and dislikes.
• Specificity to generalization


  specific ideas in a qualitative research are directed to a general understanding of something.
• Contextualization


  Involves all variables, factors, or conditions affecting the study. The goal is to understanding human behavior-the who, what, why, how and other circumstances-affecting her/his way of life.
• Diversified data in real-life situations


  The researcher 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 observations.
• Bounds with words and visuals


  words and more words come in big quantity in this kind of research
• Internal Analysis


  Data are yielded by internal traits of the subjects individuals (i.e., emotional, mental, spiritual characteristics)