Region I

TANGLAG NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL

Tanglag, Rosario La Union

Qualitative Research
- 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.
- 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 the topic (Coghan 2014).
- 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.
Characteristics of Qualitative Research
1. Human understanding and interpretation
o Data analysis results show an individual’s mental, social, and spiritual understanding of the world.
2. Active, powerful, and forceful
o 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 speculation to traveling to places for data gathering. You are not fixated to
a certain plan.
3. Multiple research approaches and methods
o Allows you to approach or plan you study in varied ways. You are free to combine with quantitative research and use all
gathered data analysis techniques.
4. Specificity to generalization
o Specific ideas are directed to a general understanding to something. It follows an inductive or scientific method of thinking,
where you start thinking of a particular or specific content that will eventually lead you to more complex ideas such as
generalizations or conclusions.
5. Contextualization
o It involves all variable, factors, or condition affecting the study.
6. Diversified data in real-life situations
o It prefers collecting data in a natural setting like observing people as they live and work, analysing photographs or videos
as the genuinely appear.
7. Abounds with words and visuals
o Words, words, and more words come in big quantity in this kind of research.
8. Internal Analysis
o You study people perception or view about your topic, not the effects if their physical existence on your study. You will
examine that data yielded by the internal traits of the subject individuals (ie, emotional, mental, spiritual characteristics)
Types of Qualitative Research
1. Case Study- involves a long-term 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 the study.
2. Ethnography- the study of a particular cultural group to get a clear understanding of its organizational set-up internal operation, and
lifestyle.
3. Phenomenology- refers to study of how people find their experiences meaningful. Its primary goal is to make people understand
their experiences about death of love ones, care for handicapped persons, friendliness of people, etc.
4. Content and Discourse Analysis- it requires 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 person,
group, organization or any institution in communicating.
5. Historical Analysis- the examination of primary documents to make you understand the connection of past events to the present
time.
6. 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.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Qualitative Research
Advantages Disadvantages
Adopts a naturalistic approach to its subject matter, which means that those Involve a lot of researchers subjectivity in data analysis
involve in the research understand things based on what they find
meaningful.
Promotes understanding of human behaviour or personality traits in their It is hard to know the validity or reliability of the data
natural settings
It is instrumental for positive societal changes Open-ended questions yield “data overload” that requires
long time analysis
It engenders respect for peoples individuality as it demands the researchers Time consuming
careful and attentive stand toward peoples world views.
Way of understanding and interpreting social interactions Involves several processes, which results greatly depend on
the researcher’s view or interpretation
It increases the researchers’ interest in the study as it includes the
researchers experience or background knowledge in interpreting verbal and
visual data.
Offers multiple ways of acquiring and examining knowledge about something.