Practical Research 1 Grade 11

Second Semester
Week4
Chapter2. Determining Qualitative Research Design
Lesson4. Research Design
Lesson Description:
This lesson introduces you to the five (5) most common types of qualitative research in the social sciences
and humanities and their usefulness in everyday life, their characteristics, strengths and weaknesses.
Lesson Objectives:
After this lesson, the students will be able to learn how to do the following:
1. Describe the five most common types of qualitative research designs
2. Determine the usefulness and appropriateness of each type
Narrative research is an umbrella term encompassing methodologies that rely on spoken or written words.
Narrative research usually focuses on one or two individuals. The aim is to tell a story of individual
experiences through the identification and interpretation of patterns of meaning. This form of research
explores expressed experiences in lived and told stories of individuals. As narratives always occur within
specific situations, narrative research also tries to consider the social and cultural narratives in which
individual experiences take place. Stories, as the main unit of analysis, are gathered through various data
sources. Narrative Research Characteristics
1. Incorporates context and place in the story
2. Is collaborative (researcher & participants construct the narrative together)
3. Always involves responding to the question, “And then what happened?” Narrative Research
Techniques
1. Restorying Narrative analysis
2. Oral history Artifacts
3. Storytelling Letter
4. writing Autobiographical and biographical writing
Phenomenology is a form of qualitative research that focuses on the study of an individual’s lived
experiences within the world. Although it is a powerful approach for inquiry, the nature of this
methodology is often intimidating to HPE researchers.
• It is an approach to qualitative research that focuses on the commonality of a lived experience
within a particular group. The fundamental goal of the approach is to arrive at a description of the nature
of the particular phenomenon
• Typically, interviews are conducted with a group of individuals who have first-hand knowledge of
an event, situation or experience. The interview(s) attempts to answer two broad questions (Moustakas,
1994): What have you experienced in terms of the phenomenon? What contexts or situation have typically
influenced your experiences of the phenomenon (Creswell, 2013)? Other forms of data such as
documents, observations and art may also be used.
• The data is then read and reread and culled for like phrases and themes that are then grouped to
form clusters of meaning (Creswell, 2013). Through this process the researcher may construct the
universal meaning of the event, situation or experience and arrive at a more profound understanding of
the phenomenon. Two Types of Phenomenology
1. Descriptive
2. Interpretive
Grounded theory refers to a set of systematic inductive methods for conducting qualitative research aimed
toward theory development.
The term grounded theory denotes dual referents:
(a) A method consisting of flexible methodological strategies and
(b) The products of this type of inquiry. Increasingly, researchers use the term to mean the methods
of inquiry for collecting and, in particular, analyzing data.
• The methodological strategies of grounded theory are aimed to construct middlelevel theories
directly from data analysis. The inductive theoretical thrust of these methods is central to their logic. The
resulting analyses build their power on strong empirical foundations.
• These analyses provide focused, abstract, conceptual theories that explain the studied empirical
phenomena.
Grounded theory has considerable significance because it
(A) Provides explicit, sequential guidelines for conducting qualitative research;
(B) offers specific strategies for handling the analytic phases of inquiry;
(c) Streamlines and integrates data collection and analysis;
(d) Advances conceptual analysis of qualitative data; and
(e) Legitimizes qualitative research as scientific inquiry. Grounded theory methods have earned their
place as a standard social research method and have influenced researchers from varied disciplines and
professions.
Ethnography is a type of qualitative research that gathers observations, interviews and documentary data
to produce detailed and comprehensive accounts of different social phenomena.
When to Use Ethnography Research
Ethnographic research should be used in the early stages of user-focused systematic investigations. This is
because ethnography research helps you to gather useful information about the dispositions, goals, and
habits of the research variables in specific contexts.
Ethnography research is most suitable for complex research processes especially in markets and customer
settings. In market research, ethnography allows organizations to gain insights into consumer habits and
receive first-hand feedback on the extent to which their product or service meets the needs of target
markets.
• This research design is also useful for examining social behaviours and interactions. It is
extremely beneficial in the study employees' disposition to organizational work culture and policies.
• While ethnographic research helps businesses bridge product gaps and improve consumers'
experience, there are certain situations where this research design is counterproductive. Ethnographic
research should not be used in processes that require statistically valid analysis, test-runs or group
comparisons.
A case study is a research methodology that has commonly used in social sciences.
• A case study is a research strategy and an empirical inquiry that investigates a phenomenon
within its real-life context.
• Case studies are based on an in-depth investigation of a single individual, group or event to
explore the causes of underlying principles.
• A case study is a descriptive and exploratory analysis of a person, group or event.
• A case study research can be single or multiple case studies, includes quantitative evidence, relies
on multiple sources of evidence and benefits from the prior development of theoretical propositions.
Case studies are analysis of persons, groups, events, decisions, periods, policies, institutions or other
systems that are studied holistically by one or more methods.
Strengths of Case Studies
1. Provides detailed (rich qualitative) information.
2. Provides insight for further research.
3. Permitting investigation of otherwise impractical (or unethical) situations. Limitations of Case
Studies
1. Lacking scientific rigour and providing little basis for generalization of results to the wider
population.
2. Researchers' own subjective feeling may influence the case study (researcher bias).
3. Difficult to replicate.
4. Time-consuming and expensive.
5. The volume of data, together with the time restrictions in place, impacted on the depth of analysis
that was possible within the available resources.
This chapter includes the introduction, theoretical framework, statement of the problem, hypothesis,
scope and limitation, conceptual framework, significance of the study and the definition of terms used.

The introduction serves multiple purposes. It presents the background to your study, introduces your topic
and aims, and gives an overview of the paper. A good introduction will provide a solid foundation and
encourage readers to continue on to the main parts of your paper—the methods, results, and discussion.

What are the five importance of introduction in research?

Creswell, the five components of a good introduction are the following: “(a) establishing the problem
leading to the study, (b) reviewing the literature about the problem, (c) identifying deficiencies in the
literature about the problem, (d) targeting an audience and noting the significance of the problem for
this ...

Typically, chapter one of a research project proposal or thesis includes the following components:
Study background.
Statement of the problem.
Purpose of the study.
Research question(s)
Significance of the study.
Definition of terms.
Theoretical framework (not required for project proposal/report)
Limitations of the study.