QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

I203 Social and Organizational Issues of Information

 Common Types of Quantitative Research
Methods (Methods of Research)

Questionnaires, Surveys

Experiments and
Experimental Designs
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Descriptive Research
 Defining Features

 Aims to define the existing condition of a classified variable.

 Designed to give “answers to the questions of who, what,

when, where, and how which are linked with a research
problem.”

 It is applied only to describe what exists and to gather

information about the current status of a certain
phenomenon. (Anastas, 1999 as cited in Salkind and
Rasmussen, 2007, pp. 251-254).
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Examples

 A description of how senior high school students

celebrate their birthdays.

 A description of how parents feel about the K to

12 Curriculum.

 A description of the youth’s perception of the 2016

elections.

 A description of the attitudes of the women’s

groups towards men’s playing internet games.

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CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH

 Defining Features
 It tries to define the degree of relationship between two or more
variables using statistical data.

 It seeks to interpret the relationships between and among a

number of facts.

 Distinguishes tendencies and patterns in data, but it does not go

so far in its analysis to prove causes for these observed patterns.

 The data, relationships, and distributions variables are identified

only in a natural setting and not in a manipulated one.
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CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH
 To find if the data has an observable relationship
that can be further specified in terms of magnitude
and/or an increase or decrease.

 Correlation indicates the strength and direction of a

linear relationship between variables.
Correlation and Significance
 Is there a relationship
between two
variables/data?
 What is the direction of
the relationship?
 What is the magnitude?
 These relationships may
show any tendency for
the variables to vary
consistently.
 Pearson’s product
moment coefficient
correlation: -1.0 to
+1.0
Examples

 The relationship between successful career and

educational attainment.

 The relationship between high grades and having

tutors.

 The relationship between the entrance exam results

and attendance in review centers.

 The relationship between smoking and tuberculosis.

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CAUSAL-COMPARATIVE
QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL

EX POST FACTO
‘from what is done afterwards’
CAUSAL-COMPARATIVE RESEARCH

 Defining Features
 It endeavors to ascertain cause-effect relationships among
variables.

 It seeks to interpret the relationships between and among a

number of facts.

 Distinguishes tendencies and patterns in data, but it does not go

so far in its analysis to prove causes for these observed patterns.

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 Studies that investigate possible cause and effect
relationships by observing an existing condition or
state of affairs and searching back in time for
plausible causal factors.
Characteristics of Ex Post Facto
 Researcher takes the effect/dependent variable
and examines it retrospectively
 Establishes causes, relationships or associations and
their meanings.
 Researcher has little to no control over independent
variables.
 Flexible by nature.
Examples:
 The effect of studying in Catholic schools on the moral value
system of those who graduate from these schools

 The effect of exercising regularly to body fitness

 The effect of gender on college course choices

 The effect of good family upbringing to good performance

in class

 The effect of belonging to Christian Living organization on a

students religiosity
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Experiments

Little Albert

Milgram’s Authority Experiment

Experimental Research Design

 Experimental research in psychology applies

the scientific method to achieve the four goals of
psychology: describing, explaining, predicting, and
controlling behavior and mental processes.
 A psychologist can use experimental research to
test a specific hypothesis by measuring and
manipulating variables. By creating a controlled
environment, researchers can test the effects of an
independent variable on a dependent variable or
variables.
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True Randomized Experimental Design

 (1) Independent Variables are manipulated

 (usually by experimenter, sometimes by context)

 (2) Participants must be assigned randomly to

various conditions or groups
 When this condition is not met, it is a quasi-experimental
design

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Examples:

 A psychologist may be interested in the impact of

video game violence on children's aggression.
 The psychologist randomly assigns some children to
play a violent video game for 1 hour and other
children to play a non-violent video game for 1
hour.
 Then the psychologist observes the children socialize
afterwards to determine if the children in the
"violentvideogame“
condition behave more aggressively than the
children in the "non-violent video game" condition
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 . In example, the independent variable is video
game group. Our independent variable has two
levels: violent video games and non-violent video
games. The dependent variable is the thing that we
want to measure—in this case, aggressive behavior.
Examples:

 Effects of receiving a cookie as a reward

(independent variable) on time taken to complete
task (dependent variable).
 Participants who received a cookie took much less
time to complete the task than participants who did
not receive a cookie.

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Mixed Methodologies Win
 Puts the emphasis on the problem, not
the method
 Many combinations found in broad
range of research topics:
 Experiment / Questionnaires
 Field Study / Experiment
 Interviews / Questionnaires
 Participant Observation /
Experiments

 Can also include using both

qualitative and quantitative methods
of measurement in a single study.