CHAPTER 5:

UNDERSTANDING DATA AND

WAYS TO SYSTEMATICALLY
COLLECT DATA

PRACTICAL RESEARCH 1
LESSON 1: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH DESIGNS

What’s In
In the previous lesson, you learned the
purpose and need of literature review, its
process and the criteria in selecting, citing, and
synthesizing literature sources. In this next
lesson, it will focus on types and characteristics
of qualitative research designed.
What’s New

Design is a word which means a plan or something

that is conceptualized by the mind. As a result of a
mental activity characterized by unfixed formation of
something but an extensive interconnection of things,
a design in the field of research serves as a blueprint
or a skeletal framework of your research study. It
includes many related aspects of your research work.
A choice of a research design requires you to
finalize your mind on the purpose, philosophical
basis, and types of data of your research,
including your method of collecting, analyzing,
interpreting, and presenting the data. It is a plan
that directs your mind to several stages of your
research work (De Mey, 2013).
What is it?
There are five research designs that are commonly used in a
qualitative research, but these are also labelled as types of qualitative
research by some books on qualitative research because when you
speak of a research design, you plan your methods or techniques in
collecting and analyzing data. Your research design is realized by any
of these types of qualitative research that has its own data collecting
technique: case study, ethnography, historical study,
phenomenology, and grounded theory. Whether you think of them
as research types of research designs, just the same, you get to deal
with the same features or aspects involved in each type or design.
 TYPES
1. Case Study
To do a research study based on this research design is to
describe a person, a thing, or any creature on Earth for the purpose
of explaining the reasons behind the nature of its existence. Your
aim here is to determine why such creature (person, organization,
thing, or event) acts, behaves, occurs, or exists in a particular
manner. Usually, a case study centers on an individual or single
subject matter. Your methods of collecting data for this qualitative
research design are interview, observation and questionnaire.
One advantage of case study is its capacity to deal with a lot of
factors to determine the unique characteristics of the entity (Meng,
2012; Yin, 2012).
 TYPES
2. Ethnography
A qualitative research design called ethnography involves a
study of a certain cultural group or organization in which you,
the researcher, to obtain knowledge about the characteristics,
organizational set-up, and relationships of the group members,
must necessarily involve you in their group activities. Since this
design gives stress to the study of a group of people, in a way,
this one special kind of a case study. The only thing that makes it
different from the latter is your participation as a researcher in
the activities of the group.
 TYPES
• Ethnography requires your actual participation in the
group members’ activities while a case study treats you,
the researcher, as an outsider whose role is just to
observe the group. Realizing this qualitative research
design is living with the subjects in several months;
hence, this is usually done by anthropologists whose
interests basically lie in cultural studies (Winn, 2014).
 TYPES
3. Historical Study
This qualitative research design tells you the right research method to
determine the reasons for changes or permanence of things in the
physical world in a certain period (i.e., years, decades, or centuries).
What is referred to in the study as time of changes is not a time shorter
than a year but a period indicating a big number of years. Obviously,
historical study differs from the other research designs because of this
one element that is peculiar to it, the scope. The scope or coverage of a
historical study refers to the number of years covered, the kind of events
focused on, and the extent of new knowledge or discoveries resulting
from the historical study. A clue about the scope is usually reflected by
the title of the study such as the following examples:
 EXAMPLES

• A Five-Year Study of the Impact of the K-12 Curriculum on the Philippine

Employment System

• The Rise and Fall of the Twenty-Year Reign of the Former Philippine
President,
Ferdinand E. Marcos

• Filipino-Student Activism from the Spanish Era to the Contemporary Period

Telephones from the Nuclear Era to the Digital Age
 TYPES
• The data collecting techniques for a study following
a historical research design are biography or
autobiography reading, documentary analysis,
and chronicling activities. This last technique,
chronicling activities, makes you interview people to
trace series of events in the lives of people in a
span of time. However, one drawback of historical
study, is the absence, or loss of complete and well-
kept old that may hinder the completion of the study.
 TYPES
4. Phenomenology
A phenomenon is something you experience on Earth as a
person. It is a sensory experience that makes you perceive or
understand things that naturally occur in your life such as death,
joy, friendship, caregiving, defeat, victory, and the like. This
qualitative research design makes you follow a research method
that will let you understand the ways of how people go through
inevitable events in their lives. You are prone to extending your
time in listening to people’s recount of their significant experiences
to be able to get a clue or pattern of their techniques in coming to
terms with the positive or negative results of their life experiences.
 TYPES
• Comparing these two qualitative research
designs, phenomenology and ethnography, the
first aims at getting a thorough understanding of
an individual’s life experiences for this same
person’s realistic dealings with hard facts of life
while the second aims at defining, describing,
or portraying a certain group of people
possessing unique cultural traits.
 TYPES
• Focusing on people’s meaning and making strategies in
relation to their life experiences, phenomenology as a
qualitative research design finds itself relevant or useful
to people such as teachers, nurses, guidance
counsellors, and the like, whose work entails giving
physical and emotional assistance or relief to
people. Unstructured interview is what this research
design directs you to use in collecting data (Paris, 2014;
Winn, 2014).
 TYPES
5. Grounded Theory
A research study adhering to a grounded theory research design
aims at developing a theory to increase your understanding of
something in a psycho- social context. Such study enables you to
develop theories to explain sociologically and psychologically
influenced phenomena for proper identification of a certain
educational process. Occurring in an inductive manner, a research
study following a grounded theory design takes place in an inductive
manner, wherein one basic category of people’s action and
interactions gets related to a second category; to third category; and
so on, until a new theory emerges from the previous data (Gibson,
2014; Creswell, 2012).
 TYPES
• A return to the previous data to validate a newly found
theory is a zigzag sampling. Moving from category to
category; a study using a grounded theory design is
done by a researcher wanting to know how people fair
up in a process- bound activity such as writing.
Collecting data based on this qualitative research design
called grounded theory is through formal, informal, or
semi-structured interview, as well as analysis of
written works, notes, phone calls, meeting
proceedings, and training sessions (Picardie, 2014).
 LESSON 2: SAMPLING
What’s New?
In research, sampling is a word that refers to your method or
process of selecting respondents or people to answer questions
meant to yield data for a research study. The chosen ones
constitute the sample through which you will derive facts and
evidence to support the claims or conclusions propounded by your
research problem. The bigger group from where you choose the
sample is called population, and sampling frame is the term used
to mean the list of the members of such population from where you
will get the sample (Paris, 2013).
What is it?
The beginning of sampling could be traced back to
the early political activities of the Americans in 1920
when Literary Digest did a pioneering survey about the
American citizens’ favorite among the 1920 presidential
candidates. This was the very first survey that served as
the impetus for the discovery by academic researchers
of other sampling strategies that they categorized into
two classes: probability sampling or unbiased sampling
and non-probability sampling (Babbie, 2013)
 PROBABILITY SAMPLING OR UNBIASED SAMPLING
Probability sampling involves all members listed in the
sampling frame representing a certain population focused on
by your study. An equal chance of participation in the
sampling or selection process is given to every member
listed in the sampling frame. By means of this unbiased
sampling, you are able to obtain a sample that is capable of
representing the population under study or of showing strong
similarities in characteristics with the members of the
population.
 PROBABILITY SAMPLING OR UNBIASED SAMPLING
A sampling error crops up if the selection does not take place in
the way it is planned. Such sampling error is manifested by strong
dissimilarity between the sample and the ones listed in the sampling
frame. (P) How numerous the sampling errors depend on the size of
the sample. The smaller the sample is, the bigger the number of
sampling errors. Thus, choose to have a bigger sample of
respondents to avoid sampling errors. However, deciding to increase
the size of your sample is not so easy. There are these things you
have to mull over in finalizing about this such as expenses for
questionnaires and interview trips, interview schedules, and time for
reading respondents’ answers.
 PROBABILITY SAMPLING OR UNBIASED SAMPLING
The right sample size also depends on whether or not
the group is heterogeneous or homogeneous. The first
group requires a bigger size; the second, a smaller one. For
a study in the field of social sciences requiring an in-depth
investigation of something such as one involving the national
government, the right sample size ranges from 1,000 to
1,500 or up to 2,500. On the other hand, hundreds, not
thousands, of respondents suffice for a study about any local
government unit.
 TYPES OF PROBABILITY SAMPLING
1.Simple Random Sampling
Simple random sampling is the best type of probability
sampling through which you can choose sample from a
population. Using a pure-chance selection, you assure
every member the same opportunity to be in the sample.
Here, the only basis of including or excluding a member is
by chance or opportunity, not by any occurrence accounted
for by cause-effect relationships. Simple random sampling
happens through any of these two methods:
 TYPES OF PROBABILITY SAMPLING
 Have a list of all members of the population; write each
name on a card, and choose cards through a pure-chance
selection.
 Have a list of all members; give a number to member and
then use randomized or unordered numbers in selecting
names from the list.
 TYPES OF PROBABILITY SAMPLING
2. Systematic Sampling
For this kind of probability sampling, chance and
system are the ones to determine who should compose
the sample. For instance, if you want to have a sample of
150, you may select a set of numbers like 1 to 15, and out
of a list of 1,500 students take every 15th name on the list
until you complete the total number of respondents to
constitute your sample
 TYPES OF PROBABILITY SAMPLING
3. Cluster Sampling
This is a probability sampling that makes you
include a set of persons instead of individual members
to serve as sample members. For example, if you
want to have a sample of 120 out of 1,000 students,
you can randomly select three sections with 40
students each to constitute the sample.
 TYPES OF PROBABILITY SAMPLING
4. Stratified Sampling
The group comprising the sample is chosen in a
way that such group is liable to subdivision during
the data analysis stage. A study needing group-by-
group analysis finds stratified sampling the right
probability sampling to use.
 NON-PROBABILITY SAMPLING
Non-probability sampling disregards random
selection of subjects. The subjects are chosen based
on their availability or the purpose of the study, and in
some cases, on the sole discretion of the researchers.
This is not a scientific way of selecting respondents.
Neither does it offer a valid or an objective way of
detecting sampling errors (Edmond, 2012).
 TYPES OF NON-PROBABILITY SAMPLING
1. Quota Sampling
You resort to quota sampling when you think you know the
characteristics of the target population very well. In this case, you
tend to choose sample members possessing or indicating the
characteristics of the target population. Using a quota or a
specific set of persons whom you believe to have the
characteristics of the target population involved in the study is
your way of showing that the sample you have chosen closely
represents the target population as regards such characteristics.
 TYPES OF NON-PROBABILITY SAMPLING

2. Voluntary Sampling
Since the subjects you expect to participate in the
sample selection are the ones volunteering to constitute
the sample, there is no need for you to do any selection
process.
 TYPES OF NON-PROBABILITY SAMPLING

3.Purposive or Judgmental Sampling

You choose people whom you are sure could
correspond to the objectives of your study like
selecting those with rich experience or interest in
your study.
 TYPES OF NON-PROBABILITY SAMPLING

4.Availability Sampling
The willingness of a person as your subject to interact
with you counts a lot in this non-probability sampling
method. If during the data-collection time, you encounter
people walking on school campus, along the corridors,
and along the park or employees lining up at an office, and
these people show willingness to respond to your
questions, then you automatically consider them as your
respondents.
 TYPES OF NON-PROBABILITY SAMPLING
5. Snowball Sampling
Similar to snow expanding widely or rolling rapidly, this sampling
method does not give specific set of samples. This is true for a study
involving unspecified group of people. Dealing with varied groups of
people such as street children, mendicants, drug dependents, call
center workers, informal settlers, street vendors, and the like is
possible in this kind of non-probability sampling. Free to obtain data
from any group just like snow freely expanding and accumulating at
a certain place, you tend to increase the number of people you want
to form the sample of your study (Harding, 2013).