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What Is Descriptive Research

Descriptive research involves collecting and organizing quantitative and qualitative data to describe events or situations without looking for relationships or causes. It can involve surveys, interviews, observations, or portfolios. Surveys are commonly used and involve questions administered through written questionnaires, interviews, or telephone calls. Factors like sampling, question design, and response rates must be considered. Interviews allow for more depth but require more resources. Observations involve directly watching behaviors and can provide valuable information but are complex to conduct. Portfolios describe student performance over time through samples of their work.

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109 views

What Is Descriptive Research

Descriptive research involves collecting and organizing quantitative and qualitative data to describe events or situations without looking for relationships or causes. It can involve surveys, interviews, observations, or portfolios. Surveys are commonly used and involve questions administered through written questionnaires, interviews, or telephone calls. Factors like sampling, question design, and response rates must be considered. Interviews allow for more depth but require more resources. Observations involve directly watching behaviors and can provide valuable information but are complex to conduct. Portfolios describe student performance over time through samples of their work.

Uploaded by

light_99
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is Descriptive Research?

 Can involve collecting quantitative information


 Can describe categories of qualitative information such as patterns of interaction when using
technology in the classroom.
 Does not fit neatly into either category
 Involves gathering data that describe events and then organizes, tabulates, depicts, and describes the
data.
 Uses description as a tool to organize data into patterns that emerge during analysis.
 Often uses visual aids such as graphs and charts to aid the reader

Descriptive Research Advantages

 Educational research and experiences may contain many variables that cannot be realistically
controlled.
 Educational research may require observations of life experiences
 Data collection may be spread over a large number of people over a large geographic area

Data Collection Methods


Surveys Interviews
Observation Portfolios
s

1. Surveys

 May be used to reveal summary statistics by showing responses to all possible questionnaire items.
 Often provide leads in identifying needed changes
 May be used to explore relationships between 2 or more variables.

Survey Forms

 Written questionnaires
 Personal interviews
 Telephone interviews

Factors to be considered

 Sampling
 Type of population
 Question Form
 Question Content
 Response rates
 Costs
 Available facilities
 Length of data collection
 Computer assisted techniques for data collection
2. Interviews

 More time efficient


 Allow the researcher to establish a rapport with the respondent
 Allow the acquisition of more in-depth information
 Allow for interviewer observation
 Allow the interviewer to obtain visual cues
 May be personal or telephone interviews

Disadvantages

 Require more staff time


 Require more travel time

Mailed Questionnaires

Advantages

 Ability to reach large number of people across a wide geographic area


 Ease and low cost of distribution
 Minimal amount of staff required
 Allows respondents to respond in their time frame

Disadvantages

 Lower response rate


 Need to design a survey instrument with a simple format

Characteristics of a Good Survey

 Good questioning techniques


 Use complete sentences
 Offer a limited set of answers
 Interesting
 Worded so that questions mean the same to all
 Provide definitions for confusing terms
 Uses the “I don’t know” answer very carefully

3. Observational Research Methods

a. Naturally occurring behaviors observed in natural contexts


b. Contexts that are contrived to be realistic

 Require direct observation of behavior


 Data gathered without intermediary instruments
 Can yield a wealth of invaluable information
 Can be a complicated process
 Can be employed productively to support many purposes in educational technology
 Can be used to determine how people interact with technology in various stages of design and
implementation

2 Forms of Observational Research

1. Structured

 Rigid and controlled


 Predetermined method

2. Unstructured
 Used to determine unselective, detailed, continuous description of behavior.
 Detects unintended effects
 More time consuming because of time and labor required to collect and analyze sets of extensive
observations

Observational Research Methods

Develop observation form

 May be paper and pencil or electronic


 May use a rating scale to evaluate behavior
 A 3-point rating scale is sufficient

Newer Mediated Observation Techniques

 Audio
 Videotape
 Computers provide on-line monitoring (process of capturing characteristics of the human-computer
interaction automatically)
– Keystroke records
– Audit trails
– Logging data

4. Portfolios

 Provide a descriptive measure of student work based on actual performance


 Consist of learner-created products that reflect the processes of learning and development over time

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