Research design: qualitative and descriptive research
Qualitative and descriptive research:
both are concerned with providing descriptions of phenomena that occur
naturally, without the intervention of an experiment or an artificially
contrived treatment, and both are primary research, and occur in a natural
environment.
Qualitative research
Qualitative
methods originally developed from the methodologies of field anthropologists and sociologists concerned with studying
human behavior within the context in
which behavior would occur naturally and in which the role of the researcher
would not affect the normal behavior of the subjects.
Qualitative
research is heuristic and not deductive.
Some
forms of qualitative research narrows the focus of the research scope as the
research progresses.
It
is also concerned with the description, descriptive research as a type or
category of research refers to investigation which utilizes already existing
data or non-experiment research with preconceived hypothesis.
Procedures:
observation, tape recording, and manual transcription ect.
It
avoids establishing research questions or hypotheses, or identifying, a priori,
any variable which become the focus of the research.
It
is synthetic or holistic, with little or no manipulation of the research
environment, and uses data collection procedures with low explicitness. Thus it
avoids pitfalls.
Qualitative
research is the primary example of hypothesis generating research.
The
ultimate goal of qualitative research is to discover phenomena such as patterns
of second language behavior not previously described and to understand those
phenomena from perspective of participants in the activity.
Define
the phenomenon to be described
Use
qualitative methods to gather data
Look
for patters in the data
Validate
the data or collect more data.
Recycle.
Descriptive research
Descriptive
research involves a collection of techniques used to specific, delineate, or
describe naturally occurring phenomena without experimental manipulation.
The
researchers begin with general questions in mind about the phenomenon they are
studying or with more specific questions and objective.
Descriptive
research can be heuristic or deductive.
It can be synthetic or analytic in its
approach to the second language phenomena studied.
It
can be hypothesis-driven
No
manipulation of naturally occurring phenomena occurs.
Descriptive
study might describe an aspect of second language acquisition from a more
synthetic perspective.
Descriptive
research refers to investigation which utilizes already existing data or
non-experimental research with a preconceived hypothesis.
Data
collection (test, surveys and questionnaires, self-reports, interviews,and
observations)
Some basic procedures
Chose
your question.
Chose
the population.
Determine
methods for data collection.
Collect
the data.
Organize
and analyze the data.
Experimental research must be
analytic.
It
can be hypothesis-driven
Manipulation
and control become important measures of both internal and external validity.
Correlation
Research: looks at the interrelationship of two variables at the same time.
In
few words the qualitative research is a theory generator and the descriptive
research is a theory tester which helps us to analyze and organize all the data
with specific procedures
Multivariate Research: can investigate
the interrelationship of a large number of variables at the same time. it may be
used with data collected from different sources, such as previous descriptive
or experimental research, or data collected specifically for the current study
using tests, questionnaires, observations, etc.
