Lesson 7:  Research in Different Areas of Knowledge

Subject Area Research Approaches

     Research studies happen in any field of knowledge. Anthropology, Business, Communication, Education, Engineering, Law, and Nursing, among others, turn in a big number of research studies that reflect varied interests of people. Don’t you wonder how people in these areas conduct their research studies?

Belonging to a certain area of discipline, you have the option to choose one from these three basic research approaches:

1.     Positive or scientific Approach (Quantitative Data)

2.     Naturalistic Approach (Qualitative Data)

3.     Triangulation or Mixed method Approach

     The scientific approach gives stress to measurable and observable facts instead of personal views, feelings, or attitudes. It can be used in research under the hard sciences or STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine) and natural sciences (Biology, Physics, Chemistry). The positive or scientific approach allows control of variables or factors affecting the study. (Laursen 2010)

     To become positivist or scientific in conducting your research study, you must collect data in controlled ways through questionnaires or structured interviews. For instance, in the field of medicine, to produce a new medicine, a medical researcher subjects the data to a controlled laboratory experiment. These factual data collected are recorded in numerical or statistical forms using numbers, percentages, fractions, and the like. Expressed in measurable ways, these types of data are called quantitative data.

     The naturalistic approach, on the other hand, is people oriented. Data collected, in this case, represent personal views, attitudes, thoughts, emotions, and other subjective traits of people in a natural setting. Collecting data is done in family homes, playground, workplaces, or schools. In these places, people’s personal traits or qualities naturally surface in the way they manage themselves or interact with one another. The naturalistic approach focuses on discovering the real concept or meaning behind people’s lifestyles and social relations.

     Unlike the scientific approach that makes you express and record your findings quantitatively, which means in numerical forms, the naturalistic approach lets you present things qualitatively through verbal language. Using words rather than numbers as the unit of analysis, this second research approach concerns itself with qualitative data—one type of data that exists in abundance in social sciences, which to others exists as soft sciences. Considered as soft sciences are Anthropology, Business, Education, Economics, Law, Politics, and all subjects aligned with business and all those focused on helping professions such as, Nursing, Counseling, Physical Therapy, and the like. (Babbie 2013)

In the field of Humanities, man’s social life is also subjected to research studies. However, researchers in this area give emphasis not to man’s social life, but to the study of the meanings, significance, and visualizations of human experiences in the fields of Fine Arts, Literature, Music, Drama, Dance, and other artistically inclined subjects.

Researches in these subjects happen in any of the following humanistic categories:

1.     Literature and Art Criticism where the researchers, using well-chosen language and appropriate organizational pattern, depend greatly on their interpretative and reflective thinking in evaluating the object of their study critically.

2.     Philosophical Research where the focus of inquiry is on knowledge and principles of being and on the manner human beings conduct themselves on earth.

3.     Historical Research where the investigation centers on events and ideas that took place in man’s life at a particular period.

Hard Sciences vs. Soft Sciences

     Just like in other subjects under soft sciences such as marketing, man’s thoughts and feelings still take center stage in any research studies. The purposes of any researches in any of these two areas in business are to increase man’s understanding of the truths in line with markets and marketing activities, making him more intelligent in arriving at decisions about these aspects of his life. Research types that are useful for these areas are the basic and applied research. (Feinberg 2013)

     A quantitative or qualitative kind of research is not exclusive to hard sciences or soft sciences. These two research methods can go together in a research approach called triangulation or mixed method approach. This is the third approach to research that allows a combination or a mixture of research designs, data collection and data analysis techniques.

     Thus, there is no such thing as a clear dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative research methods because some authorities on research claim that a symbiotic relationship, in which they reinforce or strengthen each other, exists between these two research methods. Moreover, any form of knowledge, factual or opinionated, and any statistical or verbal expression of this knowledge are deduced from human experience that by nature is subjective. (Hollway 2013; Letherby 2013)