PRACTICAL RESEARCH 1
PREPARED BY: MS. ELLA M. CASIMIRO & MR. JHUL MHEL V. SONIO
CHAPTER 6:
FINDING ANSWERS
THROUGH DATA
COLLECTION
WHAT IS OBSERVATION?
Observation is a technique of gathering data whereby you personally watch, interact,
or communicate with the subjects of your research. It lets you record what people
exactly do and say in their everyday life on Earth.
1. Participant Observation
The observer, who is the researcher, takes part in the activities of the individual or
group being observed. Your actual involvement enables you to obtain firsthand
knowledge about the subjects’ behavior and the way they interact with one another.
2. Non-participation or Structured Observation
This type of observation completely detaches you from the target of your observation.
You just watch and listen to them do their own thing, without you participating in any
of their activities.
METHODS OF OBSERVATION
1. Direct Observation
This observation method makes you see or listen to everything that happens in the area of
observation.
2. Indirect Observation
This method is also called behavior archaeology because, here, you observe traces of past events
to get information or a measure of behavior, trait, or quality of your subject.
a) Continuous Monitoring or CM - Here, you observe to evaluate the way people deal with one
another.
b) Spot Sampling - This was done first by behavioral psychologists in 1920 with a focus on
researching the extent of children’s nervous habits as they would go through their regular
personality development.
ADVANTAGES
1. It uses simple data collection technique and data recording method.
2. It is inclined to realizing its objectives because it just depends on watching
and listening to the subjects without experiencing worries as to whether or
not the people will say yes or no to your observation activities.
3. It offers fresh and firsthand knowledge that will help you come out with
an easy understanding and deep reflection of the data.
4. It is quite valuable in research studies about organizations that consider
you, the researcher, a part of such entity.
DISADVANTAGES
1. It requires a long time for planning.
2.Engrossed in participating in the subjects’ activities,
you may eclipse or neglect the primary role of the
research.
3. It is prone to your hearing derogatory statements
from some people in the group that will lead to your
biased stand toward other group members.
INTERVIEW
Interview is a data gathering technique that makes you verbally ask the subjects or
respondents questions to give answers to what your research study is trying to look
for.
a) Structured Interview - This is an interview that requires the use of an interview
schedule or a list of questions answerable with one and only item from a set of
alternative responses.
b) Unstructured Interview - In this type of interview, the respondents answer the
questions based on what they personally think and feel about it.
c) Semi-structured Interview - Allowing freedom for you to change the questions and
for the respondents to think of their own answers, this semi-structured interview is
a flexible and an organized type of interview. (Rubin 2012; Bernard 2013)
APPROACHES
1. Individual Interview
Only one respondent is interviewed here. The reason behind this one-on-one interview is
the lack of trust the interviewees have among themselves.
2. Group Interview
In this interview approach, you ask the question not to one person, but to a group of
people at the same time.
3. Mediated Interview
No face-to-face interview is true for this interview approach because this takes place
through electronic communication devices such as telephones, mobile phones, email,
among others.
STEPS IN CONDUCTING AN INTERVIEW
Step 1: Getting to Know Each Other - The interview starts from the time you, the interviewer, and your
respondents see each other at the place of interview, that is, if this is a traditional interview.
Step 2: Having an Idea of the Research - This second step requires you to tell the respondents about the nature
of the interview—its purpose, importance, scope, and so on.
Step 3: Starting the Interview - You open this step with a question to encourage the respondent to talk about
himself or herself, including his or her age, family, current activities, and other things you think appear special or
interesting to him or her.
Step 4: Conducting the Interview Proper - Interview questions in this step are on the interviewee’s open and
extensive talking of things related to the research theme or research questions and on those anticipated by
him/her or emanating from his/her explanations, descriptions, or narrations of things.
Step 5: Putting an End to the Interview - Signs of the approaching end of the interview work to alert the
respondent in winding up with his or her talking.
Step 6: Pondering Over Interview Afterthoughts - This last step of the interview gives the respondent the
opportunity to ask questions about the interview activity and let him or her have an idea about what will happen
next to the interview results. (Denzin 2013; Bernard 2013; Rubin 2012)
QUESTIONNAIRE
A questionnaire is a paper containing a list of questions including the specific
place and space in the paper where you write the answers to the questions.
Purposes of a Questionnaire
1.To discover people’s thoughts and feelings about the topic of the research
2.To assist you in conducting an effective face-to-face interview with your
respondents
3.To help you plan how to obtain and record the answers to your questions
4.To make the analysis, recording, and coding of data easier and faster
TYPES OF QUESTIONNAIRE
1. Postal questionnaire - As the name connotes, this
type of questionnaire goes to the respondent
through postal service or electronic mail.
2.Self-administered questionnaire - This kind of
questionnaire makes you act as the interviewer
and the interviewee at the same time.
ADVANTAGES
1. It is cheap as it does not require you to travel to hand the
questionnaires to a big number of respondents in faraway places.
2. It entails an easy distribution to respondents.
3. It offers more opportunity for the respondents to ponder on their
responses.
4. It enables easy comparison of answers because of a certain degree
of uniformity among the questions.
5. It has the capacity to elicit spontaneous or genuine answers from
the respondents.
DISADVANTAGES
1. There is a possibility that some questions you distributed do not go back
to you, and this prevents you from getting the desired rate of response.
2. Confusing and uninteresting questions to respondents fail to elicit the
desired responses.
3. Owing to individual differences between the selected subjects and those
in the population, in general, the questionnaire is hard up in obtaining
unbiased results to represent the characteristics of the target population
4. It prevents you from being with the respondents physically to help them
unlock some difficulties in their understanding of the questions.
THANK
YOU!!!
