LESSON 4

Q U A L I TAT I V E R E S E A R C H
IN DIFFERENT AREAS OF
KNOWLEDGE
SUBJECT AREAS RESEARCH
APPROACHES
• Research studies happen in any field of knowledge. Anthropology, Business, Communication,
Education, Engineering, Law, and Nursing, among others, turn in a big number of research
studies that reflect varied interests of people. Don’t you wonder how people in these areas
conduct their research studies?

The scientific approach gives stress to measurable and observable facts instead of personal
views, feelings, or attitudes. It can be used in researches under the hard sciences or STEM
(Sciences, Technology,Engineering,Medicine) and natural sciences (Biology Physics Chemistry).
The positive or scientific approach allows control of variable or affecting the study.
SUBJECT AREAS RESEARCH
APPROACHES
The naturalistic approach, on the other hand is people-oriented. Data collected in the this case
represent personal view, attitudes, thoughts, emotions, and other subjectives traits of people in a
natural setting. Collecting data is done in family homes, playground, workplaces, or schools. In
these places, people’s personal traits or qualities naturally surface in the waat they manage
theselves or interact with one another. The naturalistic approach focusses on discovering the real
concept or meaning behind people’s lifestyle and social relations.
SUBJECT AREAS RESEARCH
APPROACHES
• Unlike the scientific approach that makes you express and record your findings quantitatively,
which means in numerical forms, the naturalistic approach lets you present things qualitatively
through verbal language. Using words rather than numbers as the unity of analysis, this second
research approach concerns itself with qualitative data one type of data that exist in abundance
in social sciences which to other exist as soft sciences

Considered as soft sciences are Anthropology, Business, Education, Economics, Law, Politics ,
and all subject aligned with business and all those focused on helping professions such as,
Nrsing, Counselling, Physical Therapy, and the like.
HARD SCIENCES VS. SOFT SCIENCES

• Just like in other subjects under soft sciences such as marketing, man’s throughts and feelings
still take center stage in any research studies. The purpose of any research in any of these two
areas in business are to increase man’s understanding of the truths in line with markets and
marketing activities, making him more intelligration in arriving at decisions about these aspects
of his life. Research types that are useful for these areas are the basic and applied research.
HARD SCIENCES VS. SOFT SCIENCES

• A quantitative research or qualitative kind of research is not exclusive to hard sciences or soft
sciences. These method can go together in a research approach called triangulation or mixed
method approach.

This is the third approach to research that allows a combination or mixture of research
designs, data collection and data analysis techniques.
HARD SCIENCES VS. SOFT SCIENCES

• Thus, there is no such things as clear dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative research
methods because some authorities on research claim that a symbiotic relationship, in which
they reinforce or strengthen each other, exist between these two research methods.

Moreover, any form of knowledge, factual or opinionated and any statistical or verbal
expression of this knowledge are deducted for human experience that by nature is subjective.