Research design: qualitative and descriptive research

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.