Research Approach
•The research approach is a method of producing new knowledge or deepening your understanding of a topic or issue.
•Research strategies include logical, experimental, and qualitative research approaches. It also helps to establish or confirm facts, and to develop new theories.
•Research approaches are plans and the procedures for research that span the steps from broad assumptions to detailed methods of data collection, analysis, and interpretation.
•This plan involves several decisions, and they need not be taken in the order in which they make sense in the order of their presentation. The overall decision involves which approach should be used to study a topic.
•Informing this decision should be the philosophical assumptions the researcher brings to the study; procedures of inquiry (called research designs); and specific research methods of data collection, analysis, and interpretation.
•The selection of a research approach is also based on the nature of the research problem or issue being addressed, the researchers’ personal experiences, and the audiences for the study.
•Thus, research approaches, research designs, and research methods are three key terms that represent a perspective about research that presents information in a successive way from broad constructions of research to the narrow procedures of methods.
The four main approaches
(main is the 3)
•The three approaches to research are:
–(a) qualitative,
–(b) quantitative, and
–(c) mixed methods.
•Unquestionably, the three approaches are not as discrete as they first appear.
•Qualitative and quantitative approaches should not be viewed as rigid, distinct categories, polar opposites, or dichotomies. Instead, they represent different ends on a continuum (Newman & Benz, 1998).
• A study tends to be more qualitative than quantitative or vice versa. Mixed methods research resides in the middle of this continuum because it incorporates elements of both qualitative and quantitative approaches.
1. Quantitative research
•Quantitative research is generally associated with the positivist/postpositivist paradigm. It usually involves collecting and converting data into numerical form so that statistical calculations can be made and conclusions drawn.
•Quantitative research is an approach for testing objective theories by examining the relationship among variables. These variables, in turn, can be measured, typically on instruments, so that numbered data can be analyzed using statistical procedures.
•The final written report has a set structure consisting of introduction, literature and theory, methods, results, and discussion.
•Like qualitative researchers, those who engage in this form of inquiry have assumptions about testing theories deductively, building in protections against bias, controlling for alternative explanations, and being able to generalize and replicate the findings.
2. Qualitative research
•Qualitative research is the approach usually associated with the social constructivist paradigm which emphasises the socially constructed nature of reality.
•It is about recording, analysing and attempting to uncover the deeper meaning and significance of human behaviour and experience, including contradictory beliefs, behaviours and emotions.
•Researchers are interested in gaining a rich and complex understanding of people’s experience and not in obtaining information which can be generalized to other larger groups.
•Qualitative research is an approach for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem.
•The process of research involves emerging questions and procedures, data typically collected in the participant’s setting, data analysis inductively building from particulars to general themes, and the researcher making interpretations of the meaning of the data.
•The final written report has a flexible structure. Those who engage in this form of inquiry support a way of looking at research that honors an inductive style, a focus on individual meaning, and the importance of rendering the complexity of a situation.
3. Mixed methods
•Pragmatic approach to research (mixed methods)
•The pragmatic approach to science involves using the method which appears best suited to the research problem and not getting caught up in philosophical debates about which is the best approach.
•Pragmatic researchers therefore grant themselves the freedom to use any of the methods, techniques and procedures typically associated with quantitative or qualitative research.
•They recognise that every method has its limitations and that the different approaches can be complementary.
•Mixed methods research is an approach to inquiry involving collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, integrating the two forms of data, and using distinct designs that may involve philosophical assumptions and theoretical frameworks.
•The core assumption of this form of inquiry is that the combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches provides a more complete understanding of a research problem than either approach alone.
4. Participatory approach
•Advocacy/participatory approach to research (emancipatory)
•To some degree, researchers adopting an advocacy/participatory approach feel that the approaches to research described so far do not respond to the needs or situation of people from marginalised or vulnerable groups.
•As they aim to bring about positive change in the lives of the research subjects, their approach is sometimes described as emancipatory. It is not a neutral stance. The researchers are likely to have a political agenda and to try to give the groups they are studying a voice.
•As they want their research to directly or indirectly result in some kind of reform, it is important that they involve the group being studied in the research, preferably at all stages, so as to avoid further marginalising them.
Characteristics of quantitative and qualitative research
CRITERIA FOR SELECTING A RESEARCH APPROACH
•Given the possibility of qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods approaches, what factors affect a choice of one approach over another for the design of a proposal?
•Added to worldview, design, and methods would be the
–research problem,
–the personal experiences of the researcher, and the
–audience(s) for whom the report will be written.