Handumanan National High School

Senior High School Department

Lecture Note
Practical Research 1
Week 3

Unit II: Qualitative Research and Its Importance in Daily Life

Definition of Qualitative Research

As a curious student, you want to know so many things about your surroundings as well as the
people, places, and things you find interesting, intriguing, mysterious, or unique. Try looking at
the people around you. Perhaps, you are interested in knowing these people’s ideas, views,
feelings, attitudes, or lifestyle. The information these people give you reflect their mental,
spiritual, emotional, or social upbringing, which in turn, show how they view the world.

Resulting from internal aspects, people cannot measure worldviews but can know them
through numbers. Obtaining world knowledge in this manner directs you to do a research called
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. As such, it usually takes place in
soft sciences like social sciences, politics, economics, humanities, education, psychology,
nursing, and all business-related subjects.

Subjectivity in qualitative research is true, not only for an individual or a group under study, but
also for you, the researcher, because of your personal involvement in every stage of your
research. For instance, during interviews, you tend to admire or appreciate people’s ideas based
on their answers or your observations and analysis of certain objects. By carefully looking at or
listening to the subject or object in a natural setting, you become affected by their expressions
of what they think and feel about a topic. (Coghan 2014)

In a qualitative research, the reality is conditioned by society and people’s intentions are
involved in explaining cause-effect relationships. Things are studied in their natural setting,
enough for you to conclude that qualitative research is an act of inquiry or investigation of real-
life events. Giving you more concepts about a qualitative research are the following paragraphs
that comprehensively present the elements or characteristics, types, and advantages of this
kind of research (Silverman2013; Litchman 2013; Walliman 2014; Suter 2012):

Characteristics of a Qualitative Research

1. Human understanding and interpretation
Data analysis results show an individual’s mental, social, and spiritual understanding of the
world. Hence, through their worldviews, you come to know what kind of human being he or she
is, including his or her values, beliefs, likes, and dislikes.
2. Active, powerful, and forceful
A lot of changes occur continuously in every stage of a qualitative research. As you go through
the research process, you find the need to amend or rephrase interview questions and consider
varied ways of getting answers, like shifting from mere speculating to traveling to places for data
gathering. 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. You are free to
combine this with quantitative research and use all gathered data and analysis techniques.
 Handumanan National High School
Senior High School Department

Being a multi-method research, a qualitative study applies to all research types: descriptive,
exploratory, case study, etc.
4. Specificity to generalization
Specific ideas in a qualitative research are directed to a general understanding of something. It
follows an inductive or scientific method of thinking, where you start thinking of particular or
specific concept that will eventually lead you to more complex ideas such as generalizations or
conclusions.
5. Contextualization
A quantitative research involves all variables, factors, or conditions affecting the study. Your goal
here is to understand human behavior. Thus, it is crucial for you to examine the context or
situation of an individual’s life—the who, what, why, how, and other circumstances—affecting
his or her way of life.
6. Diversified data in real-life situations
A qualitative 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.
7. Abounds with words and visuals
Words, words, and more words come in 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. In some cases, it resorts to quoting some respondents’ answers. Likewise,
presenting people’s world views through visual presentation (i.e., pictures, videos, drawings,
and graphs) are significantly used in a qualitative research.
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. In case of objects (e.g., books and
artworks) that are subjected to a qualitative research, the investigation centers on underlying
theories or principles that govern these materials and their usefulness to
people.

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, etc. 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. Finding the reason/s behind such occurrence drives you to also delve into relationships
of people related to the case under study. Varieties of data collection methods such as
interviews, questionnaires, observations, and documentary analysis are used in a case study.

2. Ethnography
Falling in the field of anthropology, ethnography is the study of a particular cultural group to get
a clear understanding of its organizational set-up, internal operation, and lifestyle. A particular
group reveals the nature or characteristics of their own culture through the world perceptions
of the cultural group’s members.

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, etc. In doing so, other people
 Handumanan National High School
Senior High School Department

will likewise understand the meanings attached to their experiences. Those engaged in assisting
people to manage their own lives properly often do this qualitative kind of research.

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
recordings, SMS, online messages, emails, audio-visual materials, etc.) used by a person,
group, organization, or any institution in communicating. A study of language structures used in
the medium of communication to discover the effects of sociological, cultural, institutional, and
ideological factors on the content makes it a discourse analysis. In studying the content or
structures of the material, you need a question or a set of questions to guide you in your
analysis.
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. The results of your content
analysis will help you specify phenomenological changes in unchanged aspects of society
through the years.
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. Through your observation on your subjects, you will
happen to find a theory that applies to your current study. Interview, observation, and
documentary analysis are the data gathering techniques for this type of qualitative
research.

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 or personality 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 includes 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 interpretations.

Prepared by: Miss Angelica Fortuna

All right reserved
References:
Practical Research 1 Rex Publishing- Esther Baraceros