PSY 3010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Quantitative Research, Qualitative Research, Postpositivism
Research Designs
• In addition to deciding whether to use a quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods
approach, the researcher also decides on a design to use.
• Quantitative Designs
o Research strategies associated with quantitative research came out of a mainly
postpositivist worldview. Amongst the experimental methods employed are the
true experiments, quasi-experiments and single subject experiments. Non-
experimental methods include causal comparative in which the investigator
compares two or more groups in terms of a cause that has already happened and
correlational in which investigators used statistics to describe and measure the
association between two or more variables.
o Survey Research provides a numeric description of trends, attitudes or opinions of
a population by studying a sample.
▪ Cross sectional and longitudinal studies using questionnaires or structured
interview for data collection.
o Experimental Research seeks to determine if a specific treatment influences an
outcome.
▪ True experiments utilize random assignment of participants to treatment
conditions
▪ Quasi-experiments (including single subject designs) do not use random
assignment.
• Qualitative Designs
o Qualitative research approaches have historic origins in anthropology, sociology,
the humanities and evaluation.
o Narrative research
▪ The researcher studies the lives of individuals by asking for stories about
their lives. These stories are often retold by the researcher in a narrative
chronology
o Phenomenological research
▪ The researcher describes the lived experiences of individuals about a
phenomenon as described by the participants. This culminates in a work
that describes the essence of several individuals who have experienced the
phenomenon.
o Grounded theory
▪ The researcher derives an abstract theory of a process, action or interaction
grounded in the views of the participants.
o Ethnography
▪ This is a design coming from anthropology and sociology in which the
researcher studies shared patterns of behaviors, language and actions of an
existing cultural group in the natural setting over time
o Case studies
▪ The researcher develops an in depth analysis of a case involving one or
more individuals. Detailed information is collected using a number of
methods.
• Mixed Methods Designs
