Qualitative and Quantitative Research

Approaches and their Philosophies

 OUTLINE
• What is research?

• Quantitative and Qualitative research approaches

• Types of Research Questions

• Philosophical perspectives informing research

• Assignment
 What is Research?
• Research is a systematic process by which we know
more about something than we did before engaging
in the process.

• Basic research is motivated:

– by intellectual interest or curiosity in a phenomenon;
– by a state of inadequate knowledge or understanding.

• Applied research is undertaken to improve the

quality of practice of a particular discipline. Applied
research is our focus here.
 Qualitative and Quantitative approaches .

• Quantitative research uses numbers as data and

analyzes them using statistical techniques.
– It is useful to describe how variables are distributed
across a population or phenomenon or to seek the
cause of events and seek to predict similar events in the
future.

• Qualitative research uses words as data and

collects and analyzes them in all sorts of ways
– It helps us understand how people interpret their
experiences themselves and construct their worlds, and
what meaning they attribute to their experiences.
 Four Philosophical Perspectives

• Positivism/Postpositivism: reality exists “out there” and it

is observable, stable, and measurable. (Postpositivism:
knowledge is relative, but we can use empirical evidence to
distinguish between more and less plausible claims.)
• Interpretation /Constructivism: Reality is socially
constructed, and there are multiple realities or
interpretations of a single event. Researchers do not “find”
knowledge, they construct it.
• Critical Research: Focused on power—who has it, how it’s
negotiated, what structures in society reinforce its current
distribution, and so on.
• Post-structuralism/Postmodernism: There is no single
“truth” with a capital “T”; rather there are multiple “truths.”
 Four Philosophical Perspectives in Practice

• Positivist/postpositivist: Start with a hypothesis, design an

intervention, set up an experiment controlling for as many
variables as possible, and then measure the results.
• Interpretive or qualitative: Understand the experience from
the perspective of the subjects, or discover which factors
differentiate subjects; use interviews, observation, and
review artifacts and documents.
• Critical: Collective investigation and analysis of the
underlying socioeconomic, political, and cultural causes of a
problem, with the goal of taking collective action to address
the problem
• Postmodern / poststructural: Question and “disrupt” the
dichotomies inherent in the research problem; present
findings from multiple perspectives and in a variety of forms.
 Key Characteristics of Qualitative Research
• Focus on Process, Meaning and Understanding:
– The overall purpose is to understand how people make
sense out of their lives.
• Researcher as Primary Instrument: Allows flexible,
emergent, responsive approach to data collection
• Inductive Process: Researchers gather data to build
theories, working from the particular to the
general.
• Rich Description: Words and pictures are used to
convey what the researcher has learned about a
phenomenon and support the findings of the study.
 Other Characteristics of Qualitative
Research
• Study design is emergent and flexible, responsive
to changing conditions of the study in progress.
• Sample selection is usually (but not always)
nonrandom, purposeful, and small, as opposed to
larger, more random sampling in quantitative
research.
• The investigator often spends a substantial amount
of time in the natural setting (the “field”) of the
study, often in intense contact with participants.
 Desirable Researcher Competencies
• A questioning stance with regard to your work
and life context.
• High tolerance for ambiguity.
• Being a careful observer.
• Asking good questions.
• Thinking inductively.
 Assignment 1
The first desirable researcher competency the
author identifies is “a questioning stance with
regard to your work and life context.” Identify
three phenomena from your daily life—either
things you’ve always wondered about, or a
things you’ve just observed—and phrase them
as “why” questions.
 Assignment 2
As part of your research proposal, write 1 – 3
paragraphs about the philosophical perspective /
worldview you espouse (by addressing the following):
• The philosophical perspective proposed in your
study.
• A definition of basic ideas and claim of that
perspective.
• How the perspective will influence your approach
to research.
 Assignment 3
• Describe the components of the scientific
method.
(Reference: Leedy and Ormrod (2015) Chapter 1)