Descriptive Research

 Used to determine, describe, or identify what is.

What is
Descriptive  Used to describe various aspects of the phenomenon;
Describe characteristics and/or behavior of sample
Research? population.
3 Basic types of
Descriptive Research
Methods
  Sometimes referred to as “field observation”
 With the use of this method, animal and human behavior is
closely observed.
 There are two main categories of observational method
which are the naturalistic observation and laboratory
observation.
Observational  In the naturalistic method, researchers view participants in
Method their natural environments which leads to greater
ecological validity than laboratory observation.
 Laboratory observations are usually less time-consuming
and cheaper than the other method.
 The results found when using this method are more
meaningful than those obtained with the naturalistic
method.
  It involves an in-depth study of an individual or group of
individuals. It often lead to testable hypotheses and
allow us to study rare phenomena.
 Case studies shouldn’t be used to determine cause and
effect and they have limited use for making accurate
predictions.
Case Study  Two serious problems with case studies are
Method expectancy effects and atypical individuals.
 Expectancy effects include the researcher’s underlying
biases that might affect the actions taken while
conducting research.
 Atypical individuals may lead to poor generalizations
and detract from external validity.
  In this method, participants answer questions
administered through interviews or questionnaires.

 In order for the survey to be both reliable an d valid it is

important that the questions are constructed properly,
written clear and easy to comprehend.
Survey
Method  Two types are Open-ended questions that allow for a
greater variety of responses but are difficult to analyze
statistically because data must be coded or reduced in
some manner; Close-ended questions are easy to
analyze statistically but they seriously limit the
responses that participants can give.