West Visayas State University

EED 204 Research in Education

Myra Angelie D. Oliveros

Course Facilitator
UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH
(PART 1)

TOPICS:

1. What is Research?
2.The Role, Uses, and Value of Research
3. Sources of Knowledge
4. Types of Educational Research
- Research extends our vision and
experiences.
- It helps us understand how and why
the situation exists.
- It enables us to discover new things
and ideas, validate existing theories
and generate new ones.
- It provides us accurate and reliable
information which we can use as basis
for making decisions.
 WHAT IS RESEARCH?
• Research is a systematic process of active
inquiry and discovery through collecting,
analyzing, and inferring from data so that we
can understand a given phenomenon in which
we are interested (Shulman (1981) in Schreiber & Asner-Self,
2011).

• Research is any systematic investigation,

including research development, testing, and
evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to
generalizable knowledge.
 WHAT IS RESEARCH?
Research is defined as a careful, systematic
study in a field of knowledge that is undertaken to
discover or establish facts or principles (Webster,
1984).
-also defined as a systematic process of
collecting and analyzing data to find an answer to
a question or a solution to a problem, to validate
or test an existing theory.
 Many people engage in activities which
have the characteristic of formal research.
People often ask questions and when they
cannot answer them, they make hunches.
To determine whether their hunches are
correct, they asks further questions,
evaluate their guesses and decide on the
best answer. This process cannot be called
research unless they follow systematic
procedure, ask the appropriate questions
and use reliable and valid instruments
 The Value of Research
Educators, health service providers,
entrepreneurs, managers, policy
makers, counselors, administrators,
teachers and students, needs
information to make decisions, or to
perform their functions effectively.
Research can help them meet this
need. Teachers need to know what
teaching approaches and materials can
be used to help students learn better.
 Health service providers need health-
related data in developing health programs
and in improving delivery of health services
and in identifying interventions that will
improve the health condition of individuals.
As a decision-maker, a manager and
administrators needs accurate information
before selecting a course of action.
When several options are available,
data about the options can help the
decision-maker in selecting the
best or the better alternative that
will yield a better outcome
Research has several functions:

• . It helps us answer questions, solve

problems and make decisions.
• It enables us to see and understand how
and why a situation or a problem exists.
• It helps us discover new things and ideas.
• It allows us validate existing theories or
generate new ones.
• It helps us identify and understand the
causes and effects of a situation or a
phenomenon.
The Role of Research in Improving Our
Quality of Life

Through research, new

knowledge or technology is
discovered. New knowledge can
result in development or
improvement of skills, behavior or
practices, can lead to better
conditions and better quality of life.
Moreover, new or improved tools or
strategies can result in improved
performance and/or better service delivery,
which contribute to the improvement of
man’s living condition.
To illustrate, when it was found through
research that lung cancer is associated with
smoking, campaign against smoking was
intensified.
As a consequence, many habitual smokers
stopped smoking. Those who quit smoking
become less prone to cancer and more likely to
have better health than those who continued to
smoke.
Another example is the development of the
computer and its use in the banking system. One
development that resulted from computerization is
the automated teller machine (ATM) which has
made fund transfer,
bank withdrawal and deposit, balance
inquiry, and payment of bills much
easier and faster for clients. The use of
ATM has allowed clients to have
access to bank and other services 24
hours a day, and this has definitely
made a life easier and more convenient
to many individuals.
The connection between research and the improvement of
man’s welfare

NEW SKILLS /
NEW
PRACTICES/
KNOWLEDGE
BEHAVIORS

IMPROVED
CONDITION/
RESEARCH
WELFARE

NEW TOOLS/
NEW
DEVICES/
TECHNOLOGY
APPROACHES
 USES OF RESEARCH AS A
SCIENTIFIC PROCESS
• Determine‘/describe an existing
situation (situation analysis)
• Describe a population (people,
objects, institutions, etc.)
• Compare two conditions or
groups of population,
• Determine existence, degree, or
nature of relationship between two or
more factors,
• Evaluate and/or compare
effectiveness of an intervention,
treatment or exposure, and
• Predict the value of a certain
characteristic
 THE ROLE OF RESEARCH IN
DEVELOPMENT
• Development projects/programs are
designed to improve the welfare of man.
There are development projects in
education, health, housing, employment,
business, agriculture, etc. The
development process involves planning,
implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
In each stage of development, research
plays an important role (Mercado, 1994).
• Research is needed in describing and analyzing
existing social or economic problems or
conditions.

• Research data are important inputs to planning

and in designing a program/project/activity
intended to address an existing plan

• Data on the background and needs of target

clients of a proposed program/project are
needed in the preparation of the intervention
• Program managers or project implementers
should continue collecting, analyzing and
using relevant data to determine if, or to
make sure that a project/program is being
implemented as planned.
• Project implementation should be closely
monitored to check progress and quality of
implementation. Monitoring requires accurate
information about the status of project
implementation, including rate of completion,
financial standing, and quality of performance
(inputs and outputs)
• Upon completion of a project, its
performance or impact needs to be
evaluated. For instance, the effect of a
new teaching strategy may be evaluated
in terms of its effectiveness in improving
students’ performance. A training
intervention can be evaluated in terms of
the skills learned and applied by the
training participants.
 Sources of Knowledge

Although there are other sources of knowledge, such

as experience, authority, and tradition, scientific inquiry into
educational problems provides the most valuable source of
knowledge to educators for decision making.

The major sources of knowledge can be categorized

under five headings: (1) experience, (2) authority, (3)
deductive reasoning, (4) inductive reasoning, and (5)
the scientific approach.
 Sources of Knowledge

A. Experience

With own personal experience, one can find

answers to many questions. In fact, wisdom is
passed from generation to generation as a result of
experience. The ability to learn from experience is
a characteristic of intelligent behavior. However,
experience also has limitations as a source of
knowledge.
Limitations of Experience as a Source of
Knowledge:

1. How you are affected by an event depends on

who you are. Two people will have very different
experiences in the same situation.

For example, two supervisors observing the same

classroom at the same time could truthfully compile very
different reports if one focused on and reported the things
that went right, and the other focused on and reported the
things that went wrong.
2. You so frequently need to know things
that you as an individual cannot learn by
experience.

A child turned loose to discover arithmetic

alone might figure out how to add but would
be unlikely to find an efficient way to
compute square roots.
B. Authority

For things difficult or impossible to know by

personal experience, people seek knowledge from
someone who has had experience with the
problem or has some other source of expertise.

We go to a physician with health questions and a

superintendent can consult a lawyer about a legal
problem at school.
Today, people are reluctant to rely on an individual
as an authority merely because of position or rank.
They are inclined to accept the assertions of an
authority only when that authority is indeed a
recognized expert in the area.
Closely related to authority are custom and
tradition, on which people depend for answers to
many questions related to professional as well as
everyday problems.

People often ask “How has this been done in the

past?” and then use the answer as a guide for
action.
Shortcomings or limitations of authority as source
of knowledge:

1. Authorities can be wrong. People often claim to

be experts in a field when they do not really have
the knowledge to back up the claim.

2. You may find that authorities disagree among

themselves on issues, indicating that their
authoritative statements are often more personal
opinion than fact.
C. Deductive Reasoning

Aristotle and his followers introduced the

use of Deductive Reasoning (a thinking
process in which you proceed from general
to specific knowledge through logical
argument).
Parts of an argument:

1. Conclusion- the final statement

2. Premises- other statements which offer

supporting evidence.
One major type of deductive reasoning is
the syllogism.
A syllogism consists of a major premise and
a minor premise followed by a conclusion.

For example:
“All men are mortal” (major premise);
“The king is a man” (minor premise);
“Therefore, the king is mortal” (conclusion).
In deductive reasoning, if the premises are
true, the conclusion is necessarily true.

Deductive reasoning lets you organize

premises into patterns that provide
convincing evidence for a conclusion’s
validity.
Deductive reasoning is useful in research because
it provides a way to link theory and observation. It
lets researchers deduce from existing theory what
phenomena they should observe.

Deductions from theory form hypotheses, which

are a vital part of scientific inquiry.
Limitations of Deductive reasoning as a Source
of Knowledge:

1. To arrive at true conclusions, you must begin

with true premises. The conclusion of a syllogism
can never exceed the content of the premises.
Because deductive conclusions are necessarily
elaborations on previously existing knowledge,
you cannot conduct scientific inquiry through
deductive reasoning alone because it is difficult
to establish the universal truth of many
statements dealing with scientific phenomena.
2. Deductive reasoning can organize what
people already know and can point out new
relationships as you proceed from the
general to the specific, but it is not sufficient
as a source of new knowledge.
D. Inductive Reasoning

It was Francis Bacon (1561–1626) who first called

for a new approach to knowing. He believed that
an investigator should establish general
conclusions on the basis of facts gathered through
direct observation. For him, obtaining knowledge
required that the thinker observe nature itself,
gather particular facts, and formulate
generalizations from these findings.
Deductive:
Every mammal has lungs. All rabbits are
mammals.
Therefore, every rabbit has lungs.

Inductive:
Every rabbit that has ever been observed
has lungs.
Therefore, every rabbit has lungs.
Limitations of Induction as Source of
Knowledge:

1. Exclusive use of induction often resulted

in the accumulation of isolated facts and
information that made little contribution to
the advancement of knowledge.

2. Many problems could not be solved by

induction alone.
E. The Scientific Approach

In the 19th century, scholars began to

integrate the most important aspects of the
inductive and deductive methods into a new
technique, namely the inductive-deductive
method, or the scientific approach. This
approach differs from inductive reasoning in
that it uses hypotheses.
A hypothesis is a statement describing
relationships among constructs.

Constructs are abstract ideas devised on the

basis of observations in order to relate the
observations to theory, but constructs
themselves are not observable.
Examples of constructs include motivation,
achievement, etc.
Once a hypothesis is formed, it is tentatively assumed to be
true. It identifies observations to be made to investigate a
question.

For example, a researcher interested in enhancing

mathematics performance might hypothesize that the use
of a computer-based mathematics game would improve
performance on mathematics assessments.

All hypotheses indicate specific phenomena to be observed

(the variables)—in this case, use of the game, and
improvement in students’ mathematics performance.
The use of both inductive and deductive reasoning
is characteristic of modern scientific inquiry.

Scientific approach is a method of acquiring

knowledge in which investigators move inductively
from their observations to hypotheses and then
deductively from the hypotheses to the logical
implications of the hypotheses.
They deduce the consequences that would
follow if a hypothesized relationship were
valid. If the deduced implications are
compatible with the organized body of
accepted knowledge, researchers then
further test them by gathering empirical data.
On the basis of the evidence, they accept or
reject the hypotheses.
The use of hypotheses is the principal
difference between the scientific approach
and inductive reasoning. In inductive
reasoning, you make observations first and
then organize the information gained. In the
scientific approach, you reason what you
would find if a hypothesis were true and then
make systematic observations to confirm (or
fail to confirm) the hypothesis.
 GENERAL TYPES OF
RESEARCH
Research can be classified into:
- Descriptive research
- Exploratory research
- Explanatory research
- Evaluation research

Fraenkel, Wallen, & Hyun (2012) and Check, J. & Schutt, R. (2012)
 DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH
• The descriptive type of study finds answer
to the questions who, what, when, where
and how. This type of research describes
a situation or a given state of affairs in
terms of specified aspects or factors.
• The goal of this type of research is to find
out the scope or shape of the issue or
problem
 DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH
• What may be described are characteristics
of individuals or groups (farmers, students,
administrators, entrepreneurs, patients,
etc.,) or physical environments conditions
( epidemic, calamities, leadership styles,
anxiety level, sales and profit, productivity,
etc.).
 The following examples of research topics in
specific areas fall under the descriptive type:

• “The management style of school

administrators in Iloilo City”
• “Tardiness and absenteeism among high
school students”
• “The medicinal components of five kinds of
Philippine backyard plants”
• “Smoking habits of health service
providers in government and private
hospitals”
• “Marketing practices of the loom weaving
industry in Region VI”
• “ A typical office day of a government
employee: a time allocation study”
• “The insecticidal properties of pepper”
 EXPLANATORY or
CORRELATION RESEARCH
• Many consider explanation the premier goal of
any science.

• An explanatory study goes beyond description

of the problem or situation. It attempts to explain
the possible factors related to a problem which
have been observed in a descriptive study.
 EXPLANATORY or
CORRELATION RESEARCH
• Seeks to identify causes and effects of a
phenomena, to predict how one phenomenon
will change or vary in response to variation in
some other phenomenon

• This type of study answers the questions why

and how? The factors related to the problem,
however, need not be viewed as real “causes” of
the problem, but factors which are associated
with or may contribute to the occurrence of the
problem.
• Explanatory studies seek more specific
answers to why and how questions.

• The explanatory type of study is also

called correlation research, in which the
research investigates relationships
between factors or variables.
• Examples of explanatory question:
- Is maternal emplyment in the first year of
life associated with negative child outcomes
in the first three years of life?
- Are these effects...mediated by the quality
of child care or the home environment?

(Brooks-Gunn, Han, & Wadfogel, 2002)

• Certain factors are assumed to explain or
contribute to the existence of a problem or
a certain condition or the variation in a
given situation.
• The researcher usually uses a theory or a
hypothesis to account for or explain the
forces that are assumed to have caused
the problem.
 For example, relationships between the
following pairs of variables can be studied:
Local government
employees’ knowledge
About the local Work performance
Government code

Gender
Grades

Knowledge about Compliance with

cancer medical regimen

Educational Repayment status of

Attainement cooperative
members
The following examples of research topics fall
under the explanatory or correlation category:

• Knowledge about Cancer and Compliance with

Diet, Exercise and Medical Regimen among
Cancer Patients
• Relationship Between Socioeconomic Factors
and Absenteeism Among High School Students
in the District Jaro
• Attitudes Towards Health and Smoking Habits of
Health Service Providers in Government and
Private Hospitals in Iloilo City
• Marketing Strategies and Sales Performance of
Garment Industries in the Province of Antique

• Employment and Income as Determinants of

Loan Repayment Status of Borrowers of Credit
Cooperatives in Ilocos Norte

• Factors Associated with Extent of Involvement in

Local Governance among Barangay Officials in
Region IV
 Exploratory Research
• Exploratory studies are designed to
describe an existing problem situation and
examine the underlying factors that
contribute to the emergence of the
problem, the nature of which is not yet well
known.

• Seeks to find out how people get along in

the setting under qestion, what meanings
they give to their actions, and what issues
concern them.
 Exploratory Research
• The primary goal is to learn “ What is
going on here?” and to investigate
educational phenomena without explicit
expectations.

• This purpose is associated with the use of

methods that capture large amounts of
relatively unstructured information.
• For example:

Researchers investigating children's

learning have had to look closely at the
educational effects of social context
and peer interaction.
 Examples of Exploratory
Research Topics
• Domestic Violence: Ideas, Experiences,
and Needs of Married Working Men in the
City of Baguio

• Menopause: Working Women’s Perception,

Experiences and Coping Strategies
 References
• Schreiber, J. & Asner-Self, K. (2011). Educational research: the
interrelationship of questions, sampling, design, and analysis. John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.

• David, F. (2005). Understanding and doing research.

• Ary, D., Jacobs, L. C., Sorense, C., & Walker, D. (2014). Introduction to
research in education. 9th ed. Wadsworth Cengage Learning

• Fraenkel, J, Wallen, N., & Hyun, H. (2012). How to design and evaluate
research in education. 8th ed. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

• Check, J. & Schutt, R. (2012). Research methods in education. Sage

Publications, Inc.