Different Qualitative

Research Designs
 Learning Objective

 To identify and describe

different qualitative research
designs
Key Understanding
 Knowledge of the different qualitative
research designs is essential in
conducting a doable research study.

Key Question
 What are the different qualitative research
designs?
 Qualitative Research Designs

1. Case Study
 To do a research study based on this
research design is to describe a person, a
thing, or any creature on Earth for the purpose
of explaining the reasons behind the nature of
its existence.
Your aim here is to determine why such
creature (person, organization, thing, or event)
acts, behaves, occurs, or exists in a particular
manner. Usually, a case study centers on an
individual or single subject matter.
 Qualitative Research Design

1. Case Study
 Your methods of collecting data for this
qualitative research design are interview,
observation, and questionnaire.
 One advantage of case study is its capacity to
deal with a lot of factors to determine the
unique characteristics of the entity. (Meng
2012; Yin, 2012)
 Qualitative Research Designs

2. Ethnography
 It involves a study of a certain cultural group
or organization in which you, the researcher,
to obtain knowledge about the characteristics,
organizational set-up, and relationships of the
group members, must necessarily involve you
in their group activities.
 Qualitative Research Designs

2. Ethnography

 Since this design gives stress to the study of a

group of people, in a way, this is one special
kind of a case study. The only thing that makes
it different from the latter is your participation
as a researcher in the activities of the group.
 Qualitative Research Designs

2. Ethnography
 It requires your actual participation in the
group members’ activities while a case study
treats you, the researcher, as an outsider
whose role is just to observe the group.
 Realizing this qualitative research design is
living with the subjects in several months;
hence, this is usually done by anthropologists
whose interests basically lie in cultural studies.
(Winn 2014)
 Qualitative Research Designs

3. Historical Study

 This design tells you the right research method to

determine the reasons for changes or
permanence of things in the physical world in a
certain period (i.e., years, decades, or centuries).
 Qualitative Research Designs

3. Historical Study
 The scope or coverage of a historical study refers
to the number of years covered, the kind of events
focused on, and the extent of new knowledge or
discoveries resulting from the historical study.
 Examples:
 A Five-Year Study of the Impact of the K-12
Curriculum on the Philippine Employment System
 The Rise and Fall of the Twenty-Year Reign of
Former Philippine President, Ferdinand E. Marcos
 Qualitative Research Designs

3. Historical Study
 The data collecting techniques for this research
design are biography or autobiography reading,
documentary analysis, and chronicling activities.
 This last technique, chronicling activities, makes
you interview people to trace series of events in
the lives of people in a span of time.
 However, one drawback of historical study, is the
absence, or loss of complete and well-kept old
that may hinder the completion of the study.
 Qualitative Research Designs

4. Phenomenology
 A phenomenon is something you experience on
Earth as a person. It is a sensory experience that
makes you perceive or understand things that
naturally occur in your life such as death, joy,
friendship, caregiving, defeat, victory, and the
like.
 This design makes you follow a research method
that will let you understand the ways of how
people go through inevitable events in their lives.
 Qualitative Research Designs

4. Phenomenology
 Comparing these two qualitative research
designs, phenomenology and ethnography,
the first aims at getting a thorough
understanding of an individual’s life
experiences for this same person’s realistic
dealings with hard facts of life while the
second aims at defining, describing, or
portraying a certain group of people
possessing unique cultural traits.
 Qualitative Research Designs

4. Phenomenology
 Focusing on people’s meaning and making
strategies in relation to their life experiences,
phenomenology as a qualitative research design
finds itself relevant or useful to people such as
teachers, nurses, guidance counselors, and the
like, whose work entails giving physical and
emotional assistance or relief to people.
 Unstructured interview is what this research
design directs you to use in collecting data. (Paris
2014; Winn 2014).
 Qualitative Research Designs

5. Grounded Theory
 It aims at developing a theory to increase your
understanding of something in a psycho-social
context. Such study enables you to develop
theories to explain sociologically and
psychologically influenced phenomena for proper
identification of a certain educational process.
 Qualitative Research Designs

5. Grounded Theory
 A research study following a grounded theory
design takes place in an inductive manner,
wherein one basic category of people’s action
and interactions gets related to a second
category; to third category; and so on, until a
new theory emerges from the previous data.
(Gibson 2014; Creswell 2012)
 Qualitative Research Designs
5. Grounded Theory
 A return to the previous data to validate a newly
found theory is a zigzag sampling.
 Moving from category to category, a study using
a grounded theory design is done by a
researcher wanting to know how people fair up in
a process-bound activity such as writing.
 Collecting data based on this design is through
formal, informal, or semi-structured interview, as
well as analysis of written works, notes, phone
calls, meeting proceedings, and training
sessions. (Picardie 2014)