Chapter 1

DEFINITION &
CHARACTERISTIC OF RESEARCH

Ada J. Escopete
RESEARCH

Searching for theory, testing for theory or

for solving a problem
To find out things in a systematic way to
increase knowledge (Saunders, et al., 2010)
A systematic process of collecting &
analyzing info to increase understanding
of the phenomenon w/ w/c we are
concerned/interested (Leedy & Ormrod, 2010)
 PURPOSE OF RESEARCH
Discover new facts of known phenomena
Quality of life progresses
Provides to solution to problems we encounter
Improve or develop new products
Discover unrecognized substances or elements
Verify existing knowledge
Improve educational practices by raising the
quality of school products
Promote health & prolong life
 CHARACTERISTICS OF RESEARCH
1. Logical & objective
2. Expert , systematic & accurate
investigation
3. Gathers new knowledge and data
from primary and secondary sources
4. Endeavors to organize data in
quantitative(measurable) terms if
possible & to express these data in
numerical measures
5. Researchers requires courage
6. Carefully recorded and reported
 RESEARCH CLASSIFICATION
1. As to Purpose:
a. Basic/fundamental/pure
b. Applied/action
c. Developmental
2. As to Methods:
a. Historical
b. Descriptive (Qualitative & quantitative)
c. Evaluation
d. Experimental (true & quasi)
3. As to TIME DIMENSION
a. Cross-sectional
b. Longitudinal
1. CLASSIFICATION AS TO PURPOSE:
A. BASIC RESERACH
•Also called fundamental or pure or
theoretical research
•Purpose is to increase knowledge but does
not seek to solve existing problem
•Has no immediate or direct benefit but can
be source of many new theories, principles &
ideas
1. CLASSIFICATION AS TO PURPOSE, , CONTINUED:
B. APPLIED/ACTION RESEARCH
•Seeks to solve practical problems, rather than
acquire knowledge
•Goal is to improve human condition
A. Business – focus on uncovering what needs
are unmet.
B. Education – useful in developing policies on
the structure and processes
C. Public Mgt & Governance – reviewing
existing laws, rules, regulations & policies
 COMPARISION OF BASIC & APPLIED RESEARCH
CATEGORY BASIC/THEORETICAL R. APPLIED RESEARCH (POLICY)
Purpose Producing knowledge Producing knowledge for
for understanding action
Disciple Usually confined to Often multi-disclinary
one discipline
Audience Intended for a Intended for a public
scholarly audience or
audience of policy makers
for specialists as well as scholarly
audience
Coverage Often narrow in focus Often comprehensive as it
strives for suitable solution
to a real life problem
 ACTION RESEARCH IN EDUCATION
•systematic inquiry done by teachers (or other
individuals in an educ’l setting) to gather information,
& subsequently improve, the ways their particular
educ’l setting operates, how they teach, & how well
their students learn (Mills, 2000).
•can be described as a family of research
methodologies w/c pursue ACTION (Change) &
RESEARCH (Understanding) at the same time.
•can be conducted w/ the assistance/guidance of
professional researchers in order to improve
strategies, practices, & knowledge of the environments
in w/c they practice
•focused efforts to improve the quality of a PRACTICE.
 PURPOSES & USES OF ACTION RESEARCH
Studying social issues that constrain individual
lives
To change & enhance life
To develop teaching style & student learning
Helps individuals free themselves from
constraints found in media, language, work
procedures & power relationships
1. CLASSIFICATION AS TO PURPOSE, , CONTINUED:
C. DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH
•Focuses on the findings or developing a
more suitable instrument or process than has
been available
•This is the kind of research your are
expected to conduct
ex. Development of noodles utilizing nutritious
veggies; Juicie utilizing pineapple & hibiscus;
Development of a 2-in-1 chopping & scissors,
development of a multools, valve adjuster a pocket
size tool, gear grill, anti-thief alarm
2. RESEARCH CLASSIFICATION ACCDG TO METHODS:

a. HISTORICAL
b. DESCRIPTIVE (QUALITATIVE &
QUANTITATIVE)
c. EVALUATION
d. EXPERIMENTAL (TRUE & QUASI)
2.A. HISTORICAL RESEARCH
•A transcript of a relentness surge of events, the
sequential & meaningful of human activity.
•Aims to assess the meaning & to read the message of
the happenings in w/c men & events relate
meaningfully to each other
•Objective is to interpret the signs of the past times in
order to test the hypotheses concerning causes, effects
or trends of those events w/ may help to explain
present & anticipate future events
Ex. Researcher wishes to trace the history of students activism
for purposes of determining possible ways of harnessing it to
desirable goals. He examines documents & records related to
student activism & people who have been activists
2.B. DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH
Involves the description, recording, analysis &
interpretation of conditions that now exist
Involves comparison or contrast & attempt to
discover a cause-effect relationships that exists b/w
variables
includes several types of studies to gather data:
 Naturalistic Observation - used to study behavior in its natural
habitat
 Surveys use tests, questionnaires, & interviews to sample a wide
variety of behaviors & attitudes (must choose people carefully)
 Case study - in-depth study of a single research participant
Often uses visual aids, graphs & charts
Can either be quantitative or qualitative
2.B. DESCRIPTIVE: QUANTITATIVE OR QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
QUANTITATIVE
• A survey or experiment that provides as output a quantitative or
numeric description of some fraction of the population, called
the sample.
•Systematic empirical investigation of the quantitative properties of
certain subject matter or phenomenon & the relationships
•Compare & Count Things, Survey People About Things
•N for numbers, Statistical, Quantifiable
QUALITATIVE
•Explores attitudes, behavior & experiences through methods as
interviews or focus group
•Descriptive
•Numbers is not the primary focus
QUANTITATIVE MEASURES
Used for comparison studies with Experimental
& control groups
Used for Instructional methodologies
For Program assessment using before/after
analysis of research papers(Emmons & Martin)
Must have Pre & Post Tests (Van Scoyoc)
QUALITATIVE MEASURES
Content Analysis
oEx. Analyzed course syllabi of library use through
discipline & level
oEx. Studied online tutorials, applying best practices
recommendations
Discourse Analysis
oAnalyzed student responses in writing & discussions to a
short film & compared findings to parallel study with LIS
grad Ss (Vandergrift)
Focus Groups
oDiscussed how participants experience & use the library
oStudied why students use the Internet & how much time they
use it (Wilson)
QUALITATIVE MEASURES
Interviews
Ex. Studied 25 HS students’ web use for research
assignments
Ex. Looked at what type of info 1st yr students
need & how they go about acquiring it
Observation (obtrusive)
Ex. Observed students as they conducted online
research & noted their activities
Observation (Unobtrusive)
Ex. Retrieval of discarded cheat sheets to
analyze academic misconduct
 COMPARISION OF QUANTITATIVE & QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH
CATEGORY QUANTITATIVE QUALITATIVE
AIM Classify the attributes of the subj Develop a complete or
of study, count them, & construct detailed description of the
statistical models in an attempt attributes of the subj of
to explain what is observed the study
DESIGN All aspects of the study are Emerges as the study
carefully designed before the unfolds
data are collected
DATA- Uses tools (questionnaires, Researcher is the data
GATHERING instrument) to collect numerical gathering instrument
INSTRUMENT
TYPES OF DATA In the form of numbers and In the form of words,
statistics pictures or objs
 COMPARISION OF QUANTITATIVE & QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH
CATEGORY QUANTITATIVE QUALITATIVE
DEGREE OF Objective as it seeks Subjective –
PARTIALITY precise measurement & interpretation of
analysis of target events is impt
concepts
USE OF DATA More efficient to test Richer in meaning,
hypotheses, but may miss but time consuming &
contextual is detail less able to
generalize
RESEARCHER’S Tends to remain Tends to become
PARTICIPATION objectively separated subjectively
from the subj matter immersed in the subj
matter.
1. CLASSIFICATION AS TO METHODS, CONTINUED:
C. EVALUATION RESEARCH

•Focuses on real-life events in social, policy,

contexts.
•Process of determining the merit, worth or
value of something or the product of that
process
•Focus on assessing whether objectives or
intended outcomes have been achieved by a
particular intervention or initiative
1. CLASSIFICATION AS TO METHODS, CONTINUED:
D. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH
•involves comparing 2 groups on 1outcome measure to
test some hypothesis regarding causation.
•can identify cause & effect
•In the experimental condition: all participants are
exposed to the independent variable (factors the
experimenter manipulates)
oExperimental Group: group that receives a treatment in
an experiment
oControl Group: group that receives no treatment in an
experiment
oDependent v: measurable behaviors of the participants
 EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH, EXAMPLE:
If a researcher is interested in the effects of a new medication
on headaches, the researcher would randomly divide a grp of
people with headaches into two grps.
One of the grps, the experimental group, would receive the
new medication being tested. The other grp, the control group,
would receive a placebo medication (a medication containing
a harmless substance, such as sugar, that has no physiological
effects).
Besides receiving the different medications, the grps would be
treated exactly the same so that the research could isolate the
effects of the medications. After receiving the medications,
both grps would be compared to see whether people in the
experimental group had fewer headaches than people in the
control group.
Assuming this study was properly designed, if people in the
experimental grp had fewer headaches than people in the
control grp, the researcher could conclude that the new
medication reduces headaches.
1. CLASSIFICATION AS TO METHODS, CONTINUED:
D. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH: TRUE &QUASI
TRUE EXPERIMENTAL
Evidence a greater degree of control & greater
insurance of both internal & external validity.
Emphasize randomness in group selection.

QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL
Used when random selection & assignment are not
possible. Researcher must be thoroughly aware of
the specific variables his designs fail to control &
has to take into account in the interpretation of the
data.
EXAMPLE OF EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH
3. CLASSIFICATION ACCDG TO TIME DIMENSION

a. CROSS-SECTIONAL
Observation of the population, or a
representative subset at a defined time
b. LONGITUDINAL
Repeated observations of the same
variable or set of variable over a
period of time
 CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH
the goal is to determine whether 2 or more variables
are related.
A variable - anything that can take on diff values, such
as weight, time, & height.
Ex. A researcher may be interested in determining whether
age is related to weight. s/he may discover that age is
indeed related to weight because as age increases, weight
also increases. If a correlation b/w two variables is strong
enough, knowing about one variable allows a researcher to
make a prediction about the other variable. It is important to
point out, that a correlation or relationship b/w two things
does not necessarily mean that one thing caused the other. To
draw a cause-and-effect conclusion, researchers must use
experimental research.
CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH
Allows scientists to determine the degree of relationship
between variables
Positive, negative and zero correlations are discussed when
using this type of research
Just because two things are related does not mean one
causes the other
COMPARISION OF THREE MAJOR RESEARCH METHODS
Research Problem #1

A newspaper article you read just the

other day stated that in a recently
published study done at a major
university, researchers found that
domestic violence affects 1 in every
4 women.
Research Problem #2
An outcomes assessment research
project of a 5 year old Distant
Learning program of DLSU in which
all incoming freshmen must
participate. Total student population
on campus is divided between 32%
freshmen to senior (or 4 year) and
68% transfer students.
REFERENCES
•All of literature concerning: Research Methodology
• Marczyk, DeMatteo, Festinger. 2005, Essentials of Research Design and
Methodology, John Wiley and Sons.
•Day and Gastel, 2006, How to write and Publish a Scientific Report,
Greenwood Press
•http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/gis/start.asp?whatfile=gis/gisrc/msc-proj.htm
•Creswell, J. W. (1994) Research design : qualitative and quantitative
approaches. - Thousand Oaks, Calif.; London : Sage Publications
•Oliver, Paul. Understanding the Research Process. 2011. SAGE
Publications Ltd. London.
•Jerusalem, Violeta L., et al Practical Research 2: Exploring Quantitative
Research. 2017. Fastbooks Educational Supply Inc., Manila, Philippines.
•David-Paras, Wilma. Book & Workbook on Educational Research. 2018.
Mutya Publishing House, Inc., Malabon City, Philippines.
•Prieto, Nelia G., et al. Practical Research for Senior High School 2:
Qualitative. 2017. Lorimar Publishing Inc., Quezon City, Philippines.
•Paiz, J., Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M.,
Sodrlund, L., & Brizee, A. (2013, March General format. Retrieved from
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
Just get out
and do it!