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C H A P T E R

The Process of Conducting
Research Using Quantitative
and Qualitative Approaches

W

hat is research? Research is a process in which you engage in a small set of
logical steps. In this chapter, we deﬁne research, discuss why it is important, advance
six steps for conducting research, and identify how you can conduct research
ethically by employing skills that you already have. You can approach research in
two ways—through a quantitative study or a qualitative study—depending on the
type of problem you need to research. Your choice of one of these approaches will
shape the procedures you use in each of the six steps of research. In this chapter,
we explore the many ways these two approaches are similar and different.
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
◆ Deﬁne and describe the importance of educational research.
◆ Describe the six steps in the process of research.
◆ Identify the characteristics of quantitative and qualitative research in the six steps.
◆ Identify the type of research designs associated with quantitative and qualitative
research.
◆ Discuss important ethical issues in conducting research.
◆ Recognize skills needed to design and conduct research.

To begin, consider Maria, a teacher with 10 years of experience, who teaches English at
a midsized metropolitan high school. Lately, a number of incidents in the school district
have involved students possessing weapons:
◆ A teacher found a 10th grader hiding a knife in his locker.
◆ A 12th-grade student threatened another student, telling him “he wouldn’t see the
light of day” unless he stopped harassing her.
◆ At a nearby high school, a student pointed a handgun at another student outside
the school.
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CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

These incidents alarm district ofﬁcials, school administrators, and teachers. The principal
forms a committee made up of administrators and teachers to develop guidelines about
how the school should respond to these situations. In response to a call for teachers to
serve on this committee, Maria volunteers immediately.
Maria sees the school committee assignment and her graduate program’s research
study requirement as mutual opportunities to research school violence and weapon possession and to have a positive impact on her school. Where does she begin?
Maria’s situation of balancing the dual roles of professional and graduate student
may be familiar to you. Let’s assess her present research situation:
◆ Maria recognizes the need to closely examine an important issue—school violence
and weapons at school—although she is new to research. However, she is not a
stranger to looking up topics in libraries or to searching the Internet when she has
a question about something. She has occasionally looked at a few research journals, such as the High School Journal, the Journal of Educational Research, and
Theory into Practice, in her school library, and she has overheard other teachers
talking about research studies on the subject of school violence. Although she has
no research background, she expects that research will yield important ﬁndings
for her school committee and also help her fulﬁll the requirement to conduct a
small-scale research study for her graduate degree.
◆ To complete the required research for her graduate program, Maria must overcome her fears about planning and conducting a study. To do this, she needs to
think about research not as a large, formidable task, but as a series of small, manageable steps. Knowing these smaller steps is key to the success of planning and
completing her research.
Your situation may be similar to Maria’s. At this stage, your concerns may start with the
question “What is research?”

A DEFINITION OF RESEARCH AND ITS IMPORTANCE
Research is a process of steps used to collect and analyze information to increase our
understanding of a topic or issue. At a general level, research consists of three steps:
1. Pose a question.
2. Collect data to answer the question.
3. Present an answer to the question.
This should be a familiar process. You engage in solving problems every day and
you start with a question, collect some information, and then form an answer. Although
there are a few more steps in research than these three, this is the overall framework for
research. When you examine a published study, or conduct your own study, you will
ﬁnd these three parts as the core elements.
Not all educators have an understanding and appreciation of research. For some,
research may seem like something that is important only for faculty members in colleges
and universities. Although it is true that college and university faculty members value
and conduct research, personnel in other educational settings also read and use research,
such as school psychologists, principals, school board members, adult educators, college
administrators, and graduate students. Research is important for three reasons.

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PART I An Introduction to Educational Research

Research Adds to Our Knowledge
Educators strive for continual improvement. This requires addressing problems or issues
and searching for potential solutions. Adding to knowledge means that educators
undertake research to contribute to existing information about issues. We are all aware of
pressing educational issues being debated today, such as the integration of AIDS education into the school curriculum.
Research plays a vital role in addressing these issues. Through research we develop
results that help to answer questions, and as we accumulate these results, we gain a
deeper understanding of the problems. In this way, researchers are much like bricklayers
who build a wall brick by brick, continually adding to the wall and, in the process, creating a stronger structure.
How can research speciﬁcally add to the knowledge base and existing literature?
A research report might provide a study that has not been conducted and thereby ﬁll a
void in existing knowledge. It can also provide additional results to conﬁrm or disconﬁrm results of prior studies. It can help add to the literature about practices that work or
advance better practices that educators might try in their educational setting. It can provide information about people and places that have not been previously studied.
Suppose that you decide to research how elementary schoolchildren learn social
skills. If you study how children develop social skills, and past research has not examined this topic, your research study addresses a gap in knowledge. If your study explores
how African American children use social skills on their way home from school, your
study might replicate past studies but would test results with new participants at a different research site. If your study examines how children use social skills when at play, not
on the school grounds, but on the way home from school, the study would contribute to
knowledge by expanding our understanding of the topic. If your study examines female
children on the way home from school, your study would add female voices seldom
heard in the research. If your study has implications for how to teach social skills to students, it has practical value.

Research Improves Practice
Research is also important because it suggests improvements for practice. Armed with
research results, teachers and other educators become more effective professionals. This
effectiveness translates into better learning for kids. For instance, through research, personnel involved in teacher education programs in schools of education know much more
about training teachers today than they did 20 years ago. Zeichner (1999) summarized
the impact of research on teacher training during this period (see Table 1.1). Teacher
trainers today know about the academic capabilities of students, the characteristics of
good teacher training programs, the recurring practices in teacher training programs, the
need to challenge student beliefs and worldviews, and the tensions teacher educators
face within their institutions. But before these research results can impact teacher training
or any other aspect of education, individuals in educational settings need to be aware
of results from investigations, to know how to read research studies, to locate useful
conclusions from them, and to apply the ﬁndings to their own unique situations. Educators using research may be teachers in preschool through Grade 12, superintendents in
school district ofﬁces, school psychologists working with children with behavioral problems, or adult educators who teach English as a second language. Research may help
these individuals improve their practices on the job.
Research offers practicing educators new ideas to consider as they go about their jobs.
From reading research studies, educators can learn about new practices that have been

CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

TABLE 1.1
Zeichner’s (1999) Summary of Major Research Results in Teacher Education
Research Conducted

What Researchers Have Learned

Surveys about students in teacher
education programs

• From academic, social class, racial, ethnic, and gender characteristics of both teacher educators and their students, the research has
challenged the misconception that students who go into teaching are
academically inferior to those who go into other ﬁelds.
• Despite changing U.S. demographics, teacher education programs
admit mostly students who are white, monolingual English speakers.

Speciﬁc case studies of individual
teacher education programs

• Successful teacher education programs have a coherent vision of
good teaching and close links to local schools.
• Researchers need to spend time living in teacher education
programs to understand them.

Conceptual and historical research on
teacher education programs

• Teacher education programs differ in their approaches, such as the
importance of disciplinary knowledge versus students learning versus
critiquing societal inequalities in schooling practices.
• Programs throughout the 20th century have emphasized recurring
practices such as performance-based teacher education.

Studies of learning to teach in different
settings

• It is difﬁcult to change the tacit beliefs, understandings, and worldviews
that students bring to teacher education programs.
• The impact of a program on students can be increased through
cohort groups, portfolio development, case studies, and narratives
in which they examine their beliefs.

Nature and impact of teacher
education activities and self-studies

• Despite the sometimes unfavorable structural conditions of teacher
educators’ work, their voices are being heard.
• Teachers, in these self-studies, describe the tensions and contradictions involved in being a teacher educator.

tried in other settings or situations. For example, the adult educator working with immigrants may ﬁnd that small-group interaction that focuses on using cultural objects from the
various homelands may increase the rate at which immigrants learn the English language.
Research also helps practitioners evaluate approaches that they hope will work with
individuals in educational settings. This process involves sifting through research to
determine which results will be most useful. This process is demonstrated in Figure 1.1,
which focuses on three steps that a classroom teacher might use (Connelly, Dukacz, &
Quinlan, 1980). As shown in Figure 1.1, a teacher ﬁrst decides what needs to be implemented in the classroom, then examines alternative lines of research, and ﬁnally decides
which line of research might help accomplish what needs to be done.
For example, a reading teacher decides to incorporate more information about cultural
perspectives into the classroom. Research suggests that this may be done with classroom
interactions by inviting speakers to the room (line A) or by having the children consider
and think (cognitively) about different cultural perspectives by talking with individuals at
a local cultural center (line B). It may also be accomplished by having the children inquire
into cultural messages embedded within advertisements (line C) or identify the cultural
subject matter of speeches of famous Americans (line D). A line of research is then chosen that helps the teacher to accomplish classroom goals. This teacher might be Maria,
our teacher conducting research on weapon possession in schools and its potential for
violence. Maria hopes to present options for dealing with this issue to her committee and
needs to identify useful research lines and consider approaches taken by other schools.

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PART I An Introduction to Educational Research

FIGURE 1.1
Lines of Research and Your Decision Making
St ep 1. Dec ide what yo u w a n t t o d o i n y o u r c l a s s r o o m ( e . g . , i n c o r p o r a t e m o r e
inf or m at ion about c ult u r a l p e r s p e c t i v e s i n t h e c l a s s r o o m ) .

St ep 2. Find out what r e s e a r c h h a s t o s a y .
Research Lines

A
Adv ant ages
of inv it ed
s peak er s

B
Immersion
in cultural
settings

C
Sensitivity
to cultural
messages

D
Study specific
cultural words,
as found in
speeches

Findings A

Findings B

Findings C

Findings D

St ep 3. Dec ide whic h o f t h e l i n e s o f r e s e a r c h m i g h t h e l p y o u d o t h e t h i n g s
y ou want t o do in y our c l a s s r o o m .
Source: Adapted from Connelly, Dukacz, & Quinian, 1980.

At a broader level, research helps the practicing educator build connections with
other educators who are trying out similar ideas in different locations. Special education teachers, for example, may establish connections at research conferences where
individuals report on topics of mutual interest, such as using small-group strategies for
discipline management in classrooms.

Research Informs Policy Debates
In addition to helping educators become better practitioners, research also provides
information to policy makers when they research and debate educational topics. Policy
makers may range from federal government employees and state workers to local school
board members and administrators, and they discuss and take positions on educational
issues important to constituencies. For these individuals, research offers results that can
help them weigh various perspectives. When policy makers read research on issues,
they are informed about current debates and stances taken by other public ofﬁcials. To
be useful, research needs to have clear results, be summarized in a concise fashion, and
include data-based evidence. For example, research useful to policy makers might summarize the alternatives on:
◆ Welfare and its effect on children’s schooling among lower income families
◆ School choice and the arguments proposed by opponents and proponents

Several Problems with Research Today
Despite the importance of research, we need to realistically evaluate its contributions.
Sometimes the results show contradictory or vague ﬁndings. An education aide to the

CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

Education and Labor Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives for 27 years
expressed this confusion: “I read through every single evaluation . . . looking for a hard
sentence—a declarative sentence—something that I could put into the legislation, and
there were very few” (Viadero, 1999, p. 36). Not only are policy makers looking for a
clear “declarative sentence,” many readers of educational research search for some evidence that makes a direct statement about an educational issue. On balance, however,
research accumulates slowly, and what may seem contradictory comes together to make
sense in time. Based on the information known, for example, it took more than 4 years
to identify the most rudimentary factors about how chairpersons help faculty become
better researchers (Creswell, Wheeler, Seagren, Egly, & Beyer, 1990).
Another problem with research is the issue of questionable data. The author of a
particular research report may not have gathered information from people who are able
to understand and address the problem. The number of participants may also be dismally
low, which can cause problems in drawing appropriate statistical conclusions. The survey used in a study may contain questions that are ambiguous and vague. At a technical
level, the researcher may have chosen an inappropriate statistic for analyzing the data.
Just because research is published in a well-known journal does not automatically make
it “good” research.
To these issues we could add unclear statements about the intent of the study, the
lack of full disclosure of data collection procedures, or inarticulate statements of the
research problem that drives the inquiry. Research has limits, and you need to know how
to decipher research studies because researchers may not write them as clearly and accurately as you would like. We cannot erase all “poor” research reported in the educational
ﬁeld. We can, however, as responsible inquirers, seek to reconcile different ﬁndings and
employ sound procedures to collect and analyze data and to provide clear direction for
our own research.

THE SIX STEPS IN THE PROCESS OF RESEARCH
When researchers conduct a study, they proceed through a distinct set of steps. Years
ago these steps were identiﬁed as the “scientiﬁc method” of inquiry (Kerlinger, 1972;
Leedy & Ormrod, 2001). Using a “scientiﬁc method,” researchers:
◆ Identify a problem that deﬁnes the goal of research
◆ Make a prediction that, if conﬁrmed, resolves the problem
◆ Gather data relevant to this prediction
◆ Analyze and interpret the data to see if it supports the prediction and resolves the
question that initiated the research
Applied today, these steps provide the foundation for educational research. Although
not all studies include predictions, you engage in these steps whenever you undertake
a research study. As shown in Figure 1.2, the process of research consists of six steps:
1. Identifying a research problem
2. Reviewing the literature
3. Specifying a purpose for research
4. Collecting data
5. Analyzing and interpreting the data
6. Reporting and evaluating research

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PART I An Introduction to Educational Research

FIGURE 1.2
The Research Process Cycle
Reporting and
Evaluating Research
• Deciding on audiences
• Structuring the report
• Writing the report
sensitively
Analyzing and
Interpreting Data
• Breaking down the data
• Representing the data
• Explaining the data

Identifying a Research Problem
• Specifying a problem
• Justifying it
• Suggesting the need to study it for audiences

Reviewing the
Literature
• Locating resources
• Selecting resources
• Summarizing resources

Collecting Data

Specifying a Purpose
for Research
• Identifying the purpose
statement
• Narrowing the purpose
statement to research
questions or hypotheses

• Selecting individuals
to study
• Obtaining permissions
• Gathering information

Identifying a Research Problem
You begin a research study by identifying a topic to study—typically an issue or problem in education that needs to be resolved. Identifying a research problem consists
of specifying an issue to study, developing a justiﬁcation for studying it, and suggesting
the importance of the study for select audiences that will read the report. By specifying a
“problem,” you limit the subject matter and focus attention on a speciﬁc aspect of study.
Consider the following “problems,” each of which merits research:
◆ Teens are not learning how to connect to others in their communities
◆ Teenage smoking will lead to many premature deaths
These needs, issues, or controversies arise out of an educational need expressed by
teachers, schools, policy makers, or researchers, and we refer to them as research problems. You will state them in introductory sections of a research report and provide a
rationale for their importance. In a formal sense, these problems are part of a larger written section called the “statement of the problem,” and this section includes the topic, the
problem, a justiﬁcation for the problem, and the importance of studying it for speciﬁc
audiences such as teachers, administrators, or researchers.
Let’s examine Maria’s research to see how she will specify her study’s research
problem.
Maria plans to study school violence and weapon possession in schools. She starts
with a problem: escalating weapon possession among students in high schools. She
needs to justify the problem by providing evidence about the importance of this
problem and documenting how her study will provide new insight into the problem.
In her research, Marie will need to identify and justify the research problem that she is
studying.

Reviewing the Literature
It is important to know who has studied the research problem you plan to examine. You
may fear that you will initiate and conduct a study that merely replicates prior research.

CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

However, faculty and advisors often fear that you will plan a study that does not build on
existing knowledge and does not add to the accumulation of ﬁndings on a topic. Because
of these concerns, reviewing the literature is an important step in the research process.
Reviewing the literature means locating summaries, books, journals, and indexed publications on a topic; selectively choosing which literature to include in your review; and
then summarizing the literature in a written report.
The skills required for reviewing the literature develop over time and with practice.
You can learn how to locate journal articles and books in an academic library, access
computerized databases, choose and evaluate the quality of research on your topic, and
summarize it in a review. Library resources can be overwhelming, so having a strategy
for searching the literature and writing the review is important. Let’s examine Maria’s
approach to reviewing the literature.
To inform her committee about the latest literature on school violence and to
plan her own research, Maria needs to conduct a literature review. This process
will involve becoming familiar with the university library holdings, spending time
reviewing resources and making decisions about what literature to use, and writing a formal summary of the literature on school violence. She consults the library
catalog at her university and plans to search the computerized databases.
In order to review the literature, Maria will need to become familiar with the literature
and visit her university library.

Specifying a Purpose for Research
If your research problem covers a broad topic of concern, you need to focus it so that
you can study it. A focused restatement of the problem is the purpose statement. This
statement conveys the overall objective or intent of your research. As such, it is the most
important statement in your research study. It introduces the entire study, signals the procedures you will use to collect data, and indicates the types of results you hope to ﬁnd.
The purpose for research consists of identifying the major intent or objective for a
study and narrowing it into speciﬁc research questions or hypotheses. The purpose statement contains the major focus of the study, the participants in the study, and the location
or site of the inquiry. This purpose statement is then narrowed to research questions or
predictions that you plan to answer in your research study. Let’s check again with Maria
to see how she will write a purpose statement and research questions.
Maria now needs to write down the purpose of her study and formulate the questions she will ask of the individuals selected for her study. In draft after draft, she
sketches this purpose statement, recognizing that it will provide major direction for
her study and help keep her focused on the primary aim of her study. From this
broad purpose, Maria now needs to narrow her study to speciﬁc questions or statements that she would like her participants to answer.
Maria will need to write a good purpose statement and the research questions for her
study.

Collecting Data
Evidence helps provide answers to your research questions and hypotheses. To get these
answers, you engage in the step of collecting or gathering data. Collecting data means
identifying and selecting individuals for a study, obtaining their permission to study them,
and gathering information by asking people questions or observing their behaviors. Of
paramount concern in this process is the need to obtain accurate data from individuals

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PART I An Introduction to Educational Research

and places. This step will produce a collection of numbers (test scores, frequency of
behaviors) or words (responses, opinions, quotes). Once you identify these individuals
and places, you write method or procedure sections into your research studies. These
sections offer detailed, technical discussions about the mechanics and administration of
data collection. Many decisions, however, go into creating a good data collection procedure. Let’s see how Maria will address data collection.
At this point in the research process, Maria needs to think about where she will
conduct her study of school violence and weapon possession, who will participate
in the study, how she will obtain permission to study them, what data she will collect, and how she will gather the data. She needs to decide whether she will have
students ﬁll out forms or talk to them directly to gather data to answer her research
questions. Whichever course she chooses, she will need permission from the high
school students and, because the students are minors, from their parents.
Maria will engage in the steps of data collection to gather the data she needs to address
her research questions.

Analyzing and Interpreting the Data
During or immediately after data collection, you need to make sense of the information
supplied by individuals in the study. Analysis consists of “taking the data apart” to determine individual responses and then “putting it together” to summarize it. Analyzing and
interpreting the data involves drawing conclusions about it; representing it in tables,
ﬁgures, and pictures to summarize it; and explaining the conclusions in words to provide
answers to your research questions. You report analysis and interpretation in sections of
a research report usually titled Results, Findings, or Discussions. How will Maria analyze
and interpret the data in her research?
If Maria collects information on a written questionnaire from students across the
school district, she will need to enter the questionnaire responses into a computer
program, choose a statistical procedure, conduct the analyses, report the results in
tables, and draw conclusions about (or interpret) whether the data conﬁrm or disconﬁrm her expected trends or predictions. If she conducts face-to-face interviews,
she will collect audiotapes of students talking about weapon possession at school
and transcribe these tapes to obtain a written record. With her transcriptions, she
will engage in making sense of student comments by selecting speciﬁc sentences
and paragraphs and by identifying themes of information. From these themes, she
will interpret the meaning of student comments in light of her own personal stance
and the suggestions found in past studies.
For help in the data analysis and interpretation phase of her study, Maria will need to
analyze her data and make an interpretation to answer her research questions.

Reporting and Evaluating Research
After conducting your research, you will develop a written report and distribute it to
select audiences (such as fellow teachers, administrators, parents, students) that can use
your information. Reporting research involves deciding on audiences, structuring the
report in a format acceptable to these audiences, and then writing the report in a manner that is sensitive to all readers. The audiences for research will vary from academic
researchers who contribute and read journal articles, to faculty advisors and committees
that review master’s theses and dissertations, to personnel in educational agencies and

CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

school districts who look for reports of research on timely topics. Your structure for the
research report will vary for each audience, from a formal format for theses and dissertations to a more informal document for in-house school reports. In all types of reports,
however, researchers need to be respectful and to avoid language that discriminates on
the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race, or ethnic group.
The audience for your report will have its own standards for judging the quality and
utility of the research. Evaluating research involves assessing the quality of a study
using standards advanced by individuals in education. Unfortunately, there are no ironclad standards for evaluating educational research in the academic research community;
in school districts; or in local, state, or federal agencies. Still, we need some means of
determining the quality of studies, especially published research or reports presented
to practitioner audiences. Let’s look at how Maria thinks about organizing her research
report.
Maria thinks about how she will organize her ﬁnal report to her school committee and to her university graduate committee. Her graduate committee likely has
a structure in mind for her graduate research study, and she needs to consult her
faculty advisor about the format that students typically use. She should have a general idea about what the major sections of the study will be, but the contents of the
speciﬁc paragraphs and ideas will take shape as her data analysis and interpretation
progress.
Her school report will likely be different from her research report. The school
report will be informative and concise, will offer recommendations, and will include
minimal discussions about methods and procedures. Whatever the audience and
structure for her report, it must be respectful of the audience and be devoid of discriminatory language.
Maria will need to organize and report her research in ways suitable for different
audiences.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF QUANTITATIVE AND
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN EACH OF THE SIX STEPS
Conducting educational research is more than engaging in the major steps in the process
of research. It also includes designing and writing the research in one of the two major
tracks: quantitative research or qualitative research. The way that this unfolds is illustrated in the ﬂow of the research process as shown in Figure 1.3.
Based on the nature of the research problem and the questions that will be asked
to address the problem (and accompanying review of the literature that establishes the
importance of the problem), the researcher chooses either the quantitative or qualitative
research track. The problem, the questions, and the literature reviews help to steer the
researcher toward either the quantitative or qualitative track. These, in turn, inform the
speciﬁc research design to be used and the procedures involved in them, such as sampling, data collection instruments or protocols, the procedures, the data analysis, and the
ﬁnal interpretation of results.
What are the characteristics of quantitative and qualitative research tracks at each
step in this research process? As each characteristic is discussed, it is helpful to ﬁrst
examine two sample journal articles at the end of this chapter because these articles will
be cited with illustrations for each characteristic. Marginal notes have been inserted into
the articles to identify the speciﬁc passage containing the quantitative and qualitative

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PART I An Introduction to Educational Research

FIGURE 1.3
Flow of the Research Process through Quantitative and Qualitative Research
RESEARCH PROCESS

Research
Problem

Literature
Review

Research Questions

Quantitative
Research

Qualitative
Research

Research
Designs

Quantitative Designs

Combined Designs

Qualitative Designs

• Experimental
• Correlational
• Survey

• Mixed methods
• Action research

• Grounded theory
• Ethnography
• Narrative

Sampling

Instruments/
Protocols

Data Analysis

Interpretation

Discussion, Conclusions, Limitations, Future Research

characteristics. The ﬁrst article is quantitative research while the second is qualitative
research. These two articles were chosen because they are good representatives of both
tracks of research and they illustrate within them good procedures of research. They will
become a frame of reference for each step in the process of research for the quantitative
and qualitative tracks. The two articles are:
◆ Quantitative: Deslandes, R., & Bertrand, R. (2005). Motivation of parent
involvement in secondary-level schooling. Journal of Educational Research,
98 (3), 164–175.
◆ Qualitative: Shelden, D. L., Angell, M. E., Stoner, J. B., & Roseland, B. D. (2010).
School principals’ inﬂuence on trust: Perspectives of mothers of children with
disabilities. Journal of Educational Research, 103, 159–170.

CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

Quantitative Research Characteristics
In quantitative research the major characteristics are:
◆ Describing a research problem through a description of trends or a need for an
explanation of the relationship among variables
◆ Providing a major role for the literature through suggesting the research questions
to be asked and justifying the research problem and creating a need for the direction (purpose statement and research questions or hypotheses) of the study
◆ Creating purpose statements, research questions, and hypotheses that are speciﬁc,
narrow, measurable, and observable
◆ Collecting numeric data from a large number of people using instruments with
preset questions and responses
◆ Analyzing trends, comparing groups, or relating variables using statistical analysis,
and interpreting results by comparing them with prior predictions and past research
◆ Writing the research report using standard, ﬁxed structures and evaluation criteria,
and taking an objective, unbiased approach
In quantitative research, the investigator identiﬁes a research problem based on
trends in the ﬁeld or on the need to explain why something occurs. Describing a trend
means that the research problem can be answered best by a study in which the researcher
seeks to establish the overall tendency of responses from individuals and to note how
this tendency varies among people. For example, you might seek to learn how voters
describe their attitudes toward a bond issue. Results from this study can inform how a
large population views an issue and the diversity of these views.
However, some quantitative research problems require that you explain how one
variable affects another. Variables are an attribute (e.g., attitude toward the school bond
issue) or characteristic of individuals (e.g., gender) that researchers study. By explaining
a relation among variables, you are interested in determining whether one or more variables might inﬂuence another variable. For example, quantitative researchers may seek
to know why certain voters voted against the school bond issue. The variables, gender
and attitude toward the quality of the schools, may inﬂuence individuals’ vote on the
bond issue.
For example, examine the sample quantitative article—the parent involvement study—at
the end of this chapter. The authors in the parent involvement study (Deslandes & Bertrand,
2005) are less interested in describing the level of parent involvement in secondary-level
schooling and more interested in examining the relationship between four factors—parents’ role construction, self-efﬁcacy, perceptions of teacher invitations, and perceptions
of adolescent invitations—as predictors of parent involvement at home and at school. To
examine this relation, they collect survey data from 770 parents of children in Grades 7,
8, and 9 (American system equivalents to Canadian schools). Thus, the problem being
addressed is that we know little about what factors relate to parental involvement in secondary-level schooling. Assessing whether certain factors predict an outcome is best suited
to quantitative research.
In reviewing the literature in quantitative research, you will typically see a substantial
literature review at the beginning of the study. Thus, the literature plays a major role in
two ways: justifying the need for the research problem and suggesting potential purposes
and research questions for the study. Justifying the research problem means that you use
the literature to document the importance of the issue examined in the study. To accomplish this, you search the literature, locate studies that identify the problem as important
to examine, and then cite this literature in the opening sections of a research report.
The literature also creates a need for the study, as expressed speciﬁcally in the purpose statement and the research questions or hypotheses. You identify in the literature

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PART I An Introduction to Educational Research

key variables, relations, and trends, and use these to provide direction for your research
questions and hypotheses. A literature review on college students, for example, may
show that we know little about the problem of binge drinking. Existing literature, however, may identify the importance of peer groups and styles of interacting among student peer groups. Thus, important research questions might address how peers and their
interaction styles inﬂuence binge drinking on college campuses. In this way, the literature in a quantitative study both documents the need to study the problem and provides
direction for the research questions.
In the quantitative parent involvement study (Deslandes & Bertrand, 2005), the
authors cite extensive literature at the beginning of the article. In these paragraphs, the
authors rely on the model of the parent involvement process, and they discuss the literature surrounding each of the four major factors that are expected to inﬂuence parental
involvement. They begin by reviewing the literature about the demographic or personal
factors such as family size and educational level, then they proceed to review the literature about the major factors in the study that they predict will inﬂuence parental
involvement—parents’ role construction, parents’ self-efﬁcacy, parents’ perceptions of
teacher invitations, and parents’ perceptions of student invitations. In this way, the introduction establishes the research that has been reported in the literature on each of the
four factors in the study and foreshadows the research questions that will be addressed
in the study.
In quantitative research questions, you ask speciﬁc, narrow questions to obtain measurable and observable data on variables. The major statements and questions of direction in a study—the purpose statement, the research questions, and the hypotheses—are
speciﬁc and narrow because you identify only a few variables to study. From a study of
these variables, you obtain measures or assessments on an instrument or record scores
on a scale from observations. For example, in a study of adolescent career choices,
the variable, the role of the school counselor, narrows the study to a speciﬁc variable
from among many variables that might be studied (e.g., role of parents, personal investment by student). To examine the impact of the school counselor on adolescent career
choices, data must be obtained from the students.
In the quantitative parent involvement study (Deslandes & Bertrand, 2005), the
authors narrow and select a few factors that they predict will explain parental involvement. They state their purpose of the study and the major research questions. They say
that they will examine four factors that inﬂuence parental involvement at home and
at school, and then they identify the four factors that they predict will inﬂuence this
involvement. Thus, their research questions are speciﬁc to four factors, and later in the
method section, they explain how they will measure these factors.
In quantitative data collection, you use an instrument to measure the variables in
the study. An instrument is a tool for measuring, observing, or documenting quantitative
data. It contains speciﬁc questions and response possibilities that you establish or develop
in advance of the study. Examples of instruments are survey questionnaires, standardized
tests, and checklists that you might use to observe a student’s or teacher’s behaviors. You
administer this instrument to participants and collect data in the form of numbers. For
instance, you might collect responses based on students checking boxes on a form, or
from checklists you complete as you watch a student perform a task in the classroom.
The intent of this process is to apply the results (called generalizing the results) from a
small number of people to a large number. The larger the number of individuals studied,
the stronger the case for applying the results to a large number of people. For example, on a survey sent to 500 parents in a school district, the researcher seeks information about parents’ attitudes toward the educational needs of pregnant teenagers in the
schools. The researcher selects an instrument, “Attitudes toward Education of Pregnant

CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

Teenagers,” found through a search of library resources. The 500 parents who receive
this instrument represent a cross section of people from all socioeconomic levels in the
school district. After collecting and analyzing this data, the investigator will draw conclusions about all parents in this school district based on the representative sample studied.
Data collection is also an integral part of the quantitative parent involvement study
(Deslandes & Bertrand, 2005). The authors study a large number of parents (i.e., 770) of
children in Grades 7, 8, and 9. They survey parents using an adaptation of the instrument, “Sharing the Dream! Parent Questionnaire,” as well as items on a questionnaire
designed by other researchers to assess parents’ perceptions of student invitations. The
survey items are translated into French to ﬁt the Quebec context, and they gather quantiﬁable data (scores) on the survey. They discuss the scales used to collect the data and
how they are scored (i.e., from 1 = disagree very strongly to 6 = agree very strongly).
In quantitative data analysis, you analyze the data using mathematical procedures,
called statistics. These analyses consist of breaking down the data into parts to answer
the research questions. Statistical procedures such as comparing groups or relating scores
for individuals provide information to address the research questions or hypotheses. You
then interpret the results of this analysis in light of initial predictions or prior studies. This
interpretation is an explanation as to why the results turned out the way they did, and
often you will explain how the results either support or refute the expected predictions
in the study.
For example, in the parent involvement study (Deslandes & Bertrand, 2005), the
authors collect responses from the parents of secondary-level students who provide
scores on the survey instrument. The survey has questions relating to each of the eight
factors (or constructs) and the outcome measures as shown in Table 2. To examine the
relation of factors to parental involvement, the researchers do not use all of the items on
the survey because some were not good measures of the factors. They use a statistical
program (i.e., factor analysis) to help them identify the most important questions for each
of the four scales composed of items (or factors) in the study. With this reduced set of
questions for each of the four factors in the study, they then conduct descriptive analysis
(i.e., means and standard deviations as shown in Table 3), and use the statistical program
of regression statistical analysis to predict whether the control or personal items or four
predictors best explain the variation in scores for parent involvement. From Tables 4
and 5, we see what variables best explain the variation for each grade level (7, 8, 9) and
for the two outcome measures of parent involvement at home and parent involvement
at school. In short, the authors use statistical analysis consisting of three phases: factor
analysis, descriptive analysis, and regression analysis. The ultimate goal was to relate
variables to see what predictors (demographics or the four factors) best explain parental
involvement. Then, in the implication section of the article, the authors discuss the main
results of the study and compare their results with those found in other studies in the
literature.
In reporting and evaluating quantitative research, the overall format for a study follows a predictable pattern: introduction, review of the literature, methods, results, and
discussion. This form creates a standardized structure for quantitative studies. In addition,
it also leads to speciﬁc criteria that you might use to judge the quality of a quantitative research report. For example, you examine a quantitative study to see if it has an
extensive literature review; tests good research questions and hypotheses; uses rigorous,
impartial data collection procedures; applies appropriate statistical procedures; and forms
interpretations that naturally follow from the data.
In quantitative research, you also use procedures to ensure that your own personal
biases and values do not inﬂuence the results. You use instruments that have proven
value and that have reliable and valid scores from past uses. You design studies to control

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PART I An Introduction to Educational Research

for all variables that might introduce bias into a study. Finally, you report research without referring to yourself or your personal reaction.
In the quantitative parent involvement study (Deslandes & Bertrand, 2005), the
authors subdivide the research into standard sections typically found in quantitative studies. The study begins with an introduction that includes the literature review, purpose
statement, and research questions; the methods; the results; the discussion; and, ﬁnally,
the implications and limitations. The entire study conveys an impersonal, objective tone,
and they do not bring either their biases or their personal opinions into the study. They
use proven instruments to measure variables, and they employ multiple statistical procedures to build objectivity into the study.

Qualitative Research Characteristics
In qualitative research, we see different major characteristics at each stage of the research
process:
◆ Exploring a problem and developing a detailed understanding of a central
phenomenon
◆ Having the literature review play a minor role but justify the problem
◆ Stating the purpose and research questions in a general and broad way so as to the
participants’ experiences
◆ Collecting data based on words from a small number of individuals so that the
participants’ views are obtained
◆ Analyzing the data for description and themes using text analysis and interpreting
the larger meaning of the ﬁndings
◆ Writing the report using ﬂexible, emerging structures and evaluative criteria, and
including the researchers’ subjective reﬂexivity and bias
Qualitative research is best suited to address a research problem in which you do
not know the variables and need to explore. The literature might yield little information
about the phenomenon of study, and you need to learn more from participants through
exploration. For example, the literature may not adequately address the use of sign language in distance education courses. A qualitative research study is needed to explore
this phenomenon from the perspective of distance education students. Unquestionably,
using sign language in such courses is complex and may not have been examined in
the prior literature. A central phenomenon is the key concept, idea, or process studied
in qualitative research. Thus, the research problem of the difﬁculty in teaching children
who are deaf requires both an exploration (because we need to better know how to
teach these children) and an understanding (because of its complexity) of the process of
teaching and learning.
The authors in the sample article on mothers’ trust in school principals (Shelden
et al., 2010) build a case for the importance of trust in the opening passages of the article. They suggest that it is an important issue, and that it has a positive effect on student
outcomes. They then narrow the discussion to trust of school leaders and then to parents of children with disabilities, and then ﬁnally to the relationships between home and
school partnerships for students with disabilities. They point out the problem of possible
discrepant viewpoints between parents and schools—a potential problem that needs to
be addressed. They then discuss the need for exploring further the critical role of principals in establishing trust in the relationships between families of children with disabilities
and education professionals. In sum, they open the article by discussing the important
central phenomenon of trust and exploring the potential discrepant viewpoints between

CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

mothers of individuals with disabilities and principals. They say that they view trust as
the “central phenomenon requiring exploration and understanding” (p. 161).
In qualitative research, the literature review plays a less substantial role at the beginning of the study than in quantitative research. In qualitative research, although you
may review the literature to justify the need to study the research problem, the literature
does not provide major direction for the research questions. The reason for this is that
qualitative research relies more on the views of participants in the study and less on the
direction identiﬁed in the literature by the researcher. Thus, to use the literature to foreshadow or specify the direction for the study is inconsistent with the qualitative approach
of learning from participants. For example, one qualitative researcher who studied bullying in the schools cited several studies at the beginning of the research to provide
evidence for the problem but did not use the literature to specify the research questions.
Instead, this researcher attempted to answer in the research the most general, open question possible, “What is bullying?,” and to learn how students constructed their view of
this experience.
In the illustrative sample qualitative study by Shelden et al. (2010), the authors begin
the article by citing numerous studies from the literature. This literature review is not to
identify speciﬁc questions that need to be answered; instead, the literature review establishes the meaning and importance of the central phenomenon of trust—why it is important and the relationships needed in schools that involve parents and educational teams,
including principals. In this article, there is no separate literature review section, and the
literature is used to justify the importance of studying the potential problem of the relationships between parents (i.e., mothers) and the schools (i.e., principals).
In qualitative research, the purpose statement and the research questions are stated
so that you can best learn from participants. You research a single phenomenon of interest and state this phenomenon in a purpose statement. A qualitative study that examines
the “professionalism” of teachers, for example, asks high school teachers, “What does it
mean to be a professional?” This question focuses on understanding a single idea—being
a professional—and the responses to it will yield qualitative data such as quotations.
In the qualitative study of mothers’ trust in school principals (Shelden et al., 2010),
the authors say that the study emerged from a broader study of the perspectives of mothers of children with disabilities on trust in education personnel. The authors raise this
question, “What are the perspectives of mothers of children with disabilities on trust in
school principals?” (p. 161). This is a general and broad question that seeks to understand (or “gain insight into,” p. 161) the perspectives of the mothers.
In qualitative research, you collect data to learn from the participants in the study and
develop forms, called protocols, for recording data as the study proceeds. These forms
pose general questions so that the participants can provide answers to the questions.
Often questions on these forms will change and emerge during data collection. Examples
of these forms include an interview protocol, which consists of four or ﬁve questions, or
an observational protocol, in which the researcher records notes about the behavior of
participants. Moreover, you gather text (word) or image (picture) data. Transcribed audio
recordings form a database composed of words. Observing participants in their work or
family setting, you take notes that will become a qualitative database. When researchers
ask young children to write their thoughts in a diary, these diary entries, too, become a
text database. With each form of data, you will gather as much information as possible to
collect detailed accounts for a ﬁnal research report.
In our sample qualitative study by Shelden et al. (2010), the authors recruited a
sample of mothers of school-age children with disabilities, and conducted interviews
with 16 of these parents. In the journal article, the authors provide the eight open-ended

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PART I An Introduction to Educational Research

questions that they asked. These interviews enabled them to probe for further information, elaboration, and clariﬁcation of responses, while maintaining a “feeling of openness” to the participants’ responses.
In qualitative research typically you gather a text database, so the data analysis of
text consists of dividing it into groups of sentences, called text segments, and determining the meaning of each group of sentences. Rather than using statistics, you analyze
words or pictures to describe the central phenomenon under study. The result may be a
description of individual people or places. In some qualitative studies, the entire report
is mostly a long description of several individuals. The result may also include themes
or broad categories that represent your ﬁndings. In qualitative studies in which you both
describe individuals and identify themes, a rich, complex picture emerges. From this
complex picture, you make an interpretation of the meaning of the data by reﬂecting on
how the ﬁndings relate to existing research; by stating a personal reﬂection about the signiﬁcance of the lessons learned during the study; or by drawing out larger, more abstract
meanings.
In the study of mothers’ perspectives of trust in school principals (Shelden et al.,
2010), we can see these data analysis steps. The authors analyzed text data based on
audiotaped and transcribed verbatim passages as mentioned in the section on interviews.
In their section on data analysis, they talk about the “line-by-line coding” of their data in
which they used the words of the participants to form categories. They provide in Table 1
a detailed descriptive portrait of participants in their study, noting the ethnicity, type of
disability, grade level, and other personal information. In the results section we ﬁnd the
various themes that they identiﬁed, such as principal attributes and principal actions.
In the conclusion section, they review all of these ﬁndings, thereby creating a complex
picture of the relationship between mothers and school leaders. Although their personal
reﬂections are minimal in this study, the authors discuss their challenges in recruiting
participants to the study and how they sought to protect the identity of the participants.
In reporting qualitative research you employ a wide range of formats to report your
studies. Although the overall general form follows the standard steps in the process
of research, the sequence of these “parts” of research tends to vary from one qualitative report to another. A study may begin with a long, personal narrative told in story
form or with a more objective, scientiﬁc report that resembles quantitative research. With
such variability, it is not surprising that the standards for evaluating qualitative research
also are ﬂexible. Good qualitative reports, however, need to be realistic and persuasive to convince the reader that the study is an accurate and credible account. Qualitative reports typically contain extensive data collection to convey the complexity of the
phenomenon or process. The data analysis reﬂects description and themes as well as
the interrelation of themes. In addition, you discuss your role or position in a research
study, called being reﬂexive. This means that you reﬂect on your own biases, values, and
assumptions and actively write them into the research. This may also involve discussing personal experiences and identifying how you collaborated with participants during
phases of the project. You may also discuss how your experiences and cultural backgrounds (e.g., Asian American perspectives) affect the interpretations and conclusions
drawn in the study.
In the sample study of mothers’ trust in school principals (Shelden et al., 2010), the
authors used more of a scientiﬁc structure than a literary structure for writing their article.
This may have been done because of the requirements of the journal to address certain
aspects (e.g., methods, results, discussion). However, the article did depart from the traditional structure by not having a separate literature review section; instead, the literature
review was incorporated into the introduction to establish the importance of the central
phenomenon—trust—and to develop a need for the study. The authors did employ the

CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

personal pronoun “we” in referring to themselves in the study, a subjective orientation
typically associated with qualitative, literary writing. As mentioned earlier, references to
themselves, and especially how their backgrounds shaped their interpretation, were absent.

Similarities and Differences between Quantitative
and Qualitative Research
At this point you may be asking how quantitative research and qualitative research are
similar and different. In terms of similarity, both forms of research follow the six steps
in the process of research. There are minor differences, as well, in the introduction to a
study—the research problem section—in that both sections need to establish the importance of the problem. In quantitative research the research problem section is used to
direct the types of questions or hypotheses asked in the study, whereas in qualitative
research the research problem discussion is typically used to establish the importance of
the central idea. These differences are apparent in the comparison of the introduction to
the quantitative parent involvement study (Deslandes & Bertrand, 2005) and the qualitative mothers’ trust in school principals study (Shelden et al., 2010).
Another similarity exists in the data collection procedures. Both quantitative and
qualitative data collection may employ similar approaches, such as interviews or observations. However, quantitative approaches use more closed-ended approaches in which the
researcher identiﬁes set response categories (e.g., strongly agree, strongly disagree, and
so forth), whereas qualitative approaches use more open-ended approaches in which the
inquirer asks general questions of participants, and the participants shape the response
possibilities (e.g., in an interview with a teacher, a qualitative researcher might ask: What
does professional development mean to you?).
There are distinct differences that go beyond the forms of gathering data. In data
analysis, the procedures are quite different. In quantitative research, the investigator
relies on statistical analysis (mathematical analysis) of the data, which is typically in
numeric form. In qualitative research, statistics are not used to analyze the data; instead,
the inquirer analyzes words (e.g., transcriptions from interviews) or images (e.g., photographs). Rather than relying on statistical procedures, the qualitative researcher analyzes
the words to group them into larger meanings of understanding, such as codes, categories, or themes. The reporting formats are also typically different, with the quantitative
structure following the typical introduction, literature review, methods, results, and conclusion sections. In qualitative research, some of these sections may be missing (e.g., the
literature review in the Shelden et al., 2010 study), and the format may be more of a literary opening with a personal vignette or passage, an unfolding story, the use of extensive
quotes from participants, and personal reﬂections from the researcher.
It should also be mentioned that rather than viewing quantitative and qualitative as
two end points in a dichotomy, but rather as different points on a continuum. Studies
may contain some elements of the characteristics of quantitative research and some elements of qualitative research. However, studies do tend to lean toward one approach or
the other, and knowing the characteristics associated with each type of research enables
a researcher to assess whether a particular study favors either quantitative or qualitative
research.
How do you choose whether to use a quantitative or a qualitative approach? Three
factors are important. First, match your approach to your research problem. Remember
that the problems best suited for quantitative research are those in which trends or explanations need to be made. For qualitative research, the problems need to be explored to
obtain a deep understanding. Second, your approach needs to ﬁt the audience(s) for the
research report. Educators write for several audiences, such as policy makers, faculty and

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PART I An Introduction to Educational Research

graduate committees, editors and review boards, evaluators of grant proposals, and individuals in schools or educational settings. It is important that the audience(s) be familiar
with the approach used in a study. Third, relate your approach to your personal experience and training. A quantitative researcher typically has taken some courses or training
in measurement, statistics, and quantitative data collection, such as experiments, correlational designs, or survey techniques. Qualitative researchers need experience in ﬁeld
studies in which they practice gathering information in a setting and learning the skills of
observing or interviewing individuals. Coursework or experience in analyzing text data
is helpful, as well as in research designs such as grounded theory, ethnography, or narrative research. Some individuals have experience and training in approaches to research
that combine both quantitative and qualitative methods, such as mixed methods research
or action research.

Research Designs Associated with Quantitative
and Qualitative Research
It is not enough to know the steps in the process of research, and that quantitative and
qualitative procedures differ at each step. This text will also go into detailed procedures
involved in quantitative, qualitative, and combined research. Research designs are the
speciﬁc procedures involved in the research process: data collection, data analysis, and
report writing. Figure 1.4 illustrates how the steps in the research process relate to quantitative and qualitative research and advances eight different research designs, used by
educational researchers, discussed in this book.

Experimental Designs
Some quantitative researchers seek to test whether an educational practice or idea makes
a difference for individuals. Experimental research procedures are ideally suited for

FIGURE 1.4
Types of Quantitative and Qualitative Research Designs and Their Primary Uses
Quantitative
Research
Designs
Intervention
Research

Qualitative
Research
Designs

NonIntervention
Research

Exploring common
experiences of individuals to
develop a theory

Explaining whether an intervention
influences an outcome for one group
as opposed to another group

Combining quantitative and
qualitative data to best understand
and explain a research problem

Exploring the shared
culture of a group of
people

Using quantitative and qualitative
data for individuals to study education
problems that they face in their settings

Describing
trends for
a population
of people

Exploring individual
stories to describe the
lives of people

Correlational Survey
Grounded
Research
Research Theory Research

Ethnographic
Research

Associating or relating
variables in a predictable
pattern for one group of
individuals
Experimental
Research

Combined
Quantitative/Qualitative
Research Designs

Narrative
Research

Mixed
Method Research

Action
Research

CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

this study. Experimental designs (also called intervention studies or group comparison
studies) are procedures in quantitative research in which the investigator determines
whether an activity or materials make a difference in results for participants. You assess
this impact by giving one group one set of activities (called an intervention) and withholding the set from another group.

Correlational Designs
In some studies, you may be unable to provide an intervention or to assign individuals
to groups. Moreover, you focus more on examining the association or relation of one or
more variables than in testing the impact of activities or materials. Correlational designs
are procedures in quantitative research in which investigators measure the degree of
association (or relation) between two or more variables using the statistical procedure
of correlational analysis. This degree of association, expressed as a number, indicates
whether the two variables are related or whether one can predict another. To accomplish
this, you study a single group of individuals rather than two or more groups as in an
experiment.

Survey Designs
In another form of quantitative research, you may not want to test an activity or materials or may not be interested in the association among variables. Instead, you seek to
describe trends in a large population of individuals. In this case, a survey is a good
procedure to use. Survey designs are procedures in quantitative research in which you
administer a survey or questionnaire to a small group of people (called the sample) to
identify trends in attitudes, opinions, behaviors, or characteristics of a large group of people (called the population).

Grounded Theory Designs
Instead of studying a single group, you might examine a number of individuals who
have all experienced an action, interaction, or process. Grounded theory designs are
systematic, qualitative procedures that researchers use to generate a general explanation
(grounded in the views of participants, called a grounded theory) that explains a process,
action, or interaction among people. The procedures for developing this theory include
primarily collecting interview data, developing and relating categories (or themes) of
information, and composing a ﬁgure or visual model that portrays the general explanation. In this way, the explanation is “grounded” in the data from participants. From this
explanation, you construct predictive statements about the experiences of individuals.

Ethnographic Designs
You may be interested in studying one group of individuals, in examining them in the
setting where they live and work, and in developing a portrait of how they interact. An
ethnographic study is well suited for this purpose. Ethnographic designs are qualitative
procedures for describing, analyzing, and interpreting a cultural group’s shared patterns
of behavior, beliefs, and language that develop over time. In ethnography, the researcher
provides a detailed picture of the culture-sharing group, drawing on various sources
of information. The ethnographer also describes the group within its setting, explores
themes or issues that develop over time as the group interacts, and details a portrait of
the group.

Narrative Research Designs
You may not be interested in describing and interpreting group behavior or ideas, or in
developing an explanation grounded in the experiences of many individuals. Instead,

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PART I An Introduction to Educational Research

you wish to tell the stories of one or two individuals. Narrative research designs are
qualitative procedures in which researchers describe the lives of individuals, collect and
tell stories about these individuals’ lives, and write narratives about their experiences.
In education, these stories often relate to school classroom experiences or activities in
schools.

Mixed Methods Designs
You decide to collect both quantitative data (i.e., quantiﬁable data) and qualitative data
(i.e., text or images). The core argument for a mixed methods design is that the combination of both forms of data provides a better understanding of a research problem than
either quantitative or qualitative data by itself. Mixed methods designs are procedures for
collecting, analyzing, and mixing both quantitative and qualitative data in a single study
or in a multiphase series of studies. In this process, you need to decide on the emphasis you will give to each form of data (priority), which form of data you will collect ﬁrst
(concurrent or sequential), how you will “mix” the data (integrating or connecting), and
whether you will use theory to guide the study (e.g., advocacy or social science theory).

Action Research Designs
Like mixed methods research, action research designs often utilize both quantitative and
qualitative data, but they focus more on procedures useful in addressing practical problems in schools and the classrooms. Action research designs are systematic procedures
used by teachers (or other individuals in an educational setting) to gather quantitative
and qualitative data to address improvements in their educational setting, their teaching,
and the learning of their students. In some action research designs, you seek to address and
solve local, practical problems, such as a classroom-discipline issue for a teacher. In other
studies, your objective might be to empower, transform, and emancipate individuals in
educational settings.

IMPORTANT ETHICAL ISSUES IN CONDUCTING RESEARCH
Respect for audiences and the use of nondiscriminatory language are ethical issues that
Maria must observe. Like Maria, all educational researchers need to be aware of and
anticipate ethical issues in their research. Such a need stems from the research horrors
of treatment of individuals in Nazi Germany and the inappropriate Tuskegee syphilis
studies (Mark & Gamble, 2009). From these and other violations of treatment of participants developed federal guidelines for conducting research as announced in the 1978
National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects on Biomedical and Behavioral Research and its Belmont Report (Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,
1978). The three basic principles of this Report involve the beneﬁcence of treatment of
participants (maximizing good outcomes and minimizing risk), respect for participants
(protecting autonomy and ensuring well-informed, voluntary participation), and justice
(a fair distribution of risk and beneﬁts).

Institutional Review Boards
Campus ofﬁces developed to monitor adherence to these three principles, and ofﬁces
of institutional review boards emerged. Federal funds could be withheld from campuses
if research conducted on those campuses did not protect the treatment of participants.
Accordingly, on campuses that receive federal funds, educational researchers need to

CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

learn about the procedures involved in applying for approval from their institutional
review board ofﬁces, and follow guidelines in developing applications for approval and
in designing consent forms for participants to complete that guarantee their protection.

Professional Associations
Ethical standards are also available from professional associations. Examples of professional associations that offer helpful guidelines include the American Educational
Research Association (AERA; Ethical Standards of the American Educational Research
Association, Strike et al., 2002), the American Psychological Association (APA; Ethical
Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, 2003), the American Anthropological
Association (AAA; Code of Ethics, 1998), and the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation (Program Evaluation Standards, adopted November 21, 1980; amended
through September 20, 1995).
According to these guidelines, individuals who participate in a study have certain
rights. Before participating in research, individuals need to know the purpose and aims
of the study, how the results will be used, and the likely social consequences the study
will have on their lives. They also have the right to refuse to participate in a study and to
withdraw at any time. When they participate and provide information, their anonymity is
protected and guaranteed by the researcher. Individuals are not to be offered excessive
ﬁnancial inducements to participate in a project. Participants also have the right to gain
something from a study. Researchers need to actively look for ways to “give back” (or
reciprocate) to participants in a study because the participants have freely provided their
time. For example, in one study involving individuals with HIV, the author shared book
royalties with the participants in the study. In another study, a researcher volunteered
to help supervise lunchroom activities in exchange for information from students in the
school.

Ethical Practices throughout the Research Process
In all steps of the research process, you need to engage in ethical practices. Practicing
ethics is a complex matter that involves much more than merely following a set of static
guidelines such as those from professional associations or conforming to guidelines from
campus institutional review boards. Ethics has become a more pervasive idea stretching
from the origins of a research study to its ﬁnal completion and distribution. Ethics should
be a primary consideration rather than an afterthought, and it should be at the forefront of the researcher’s agenda (Hesse-Bieber & Leavy, 2006). Of all of the steps in the
research process, it does tend to relate closely to the data collection and reporting and
distribution of reports than any of the other phase of research. A few of some of these
issues will be mentioned here.

Some Ethical Issues in Data Collection
It is important to respect the site in which the research takes place. This respect should
be shown by gaining permission before entering a site, by disturbing the site as little
as possible during a study, and by viewing oneself as a “guest” at the place of study.
Lincoln Public Schools (n.d.) in Lincoln, Nebraska, provides illustrative guidelines to follow for conducting research with minimal disruption to a school district. Their guidelines list several reasons why a project may not be approved. Disapproved projects are
those that take away considerable amounts of instructional time; require large amounts

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PART I An Introduction to Educational Research

of teacher, administrator, or ofﬁce time (the district may ask to be reimbursed for the
costs of compiling information, staff time, or materials); interfere with district data collection or the work of current research projects; are planned for the ﬁrst or last month of the
school year; or are received too late in the year to be adequately reviewed.
Another strategy for respecting the research site with minimal disruption is to gain
access through gatekeepers (or ofﬁcials). Researchers may need to consult with different
gatekeepers at multiple levels in an organization. For example, in a study in one high
school classroom, the researcher sought permission from several individuals, including
the school board responsible for ensuring that the rights of human participants were protected, the research ofﬁcial in the school district, the principal of the school, the teacher
in a government class, and the actual students who participated in the study and their
parents.
Other ethical issues arise in data collection and are associated with speciﬁc types
of research designs. You need to not purposefully deprive some participants of helpful
treatments, only publish positive results, or fail to disclose the purpose of the study to
participants. It is helpful to involve stakeholders in assessing risk to participants, and to
not pressure participants into signing consent forms (S. Levy, personal communication,
May 3, 2010), to not engage in practices that create power imbalances, and to respect
norms of indigeneous cultures (Lincoln, 2009).

Some Ethical Issues in Data Reporting
You need to show respect to audiences who read and use information from studies. Data
should be reported honestly, without changing or altering the ﬁndings to satisfy certain
predictions or interest groups. It may, however, be appropriate for the primary investigator to provide those at the research site with a preliminary copy of any publications.
In addition, studies completed by others should not be plagiarized, and credit should
be given for material quoted from other studies. This credit involves citing the authors
and the date of the publication, and listing the publication in the reference section of
the study. In addition, research should be free of jargon and be understandable to those
being studied. As ethical educators, we need to make every effort to communicate the
practical signiﬁcance of our research to the community of researchers and practitioners
so inquiry will be encouraged and used. Educational researchers have an ethical mandate
to produce research that is of high quality, and to report their results that convey basic
assumptions they are making. This also means that research should not sit unpublished
and that researchers should openly share their ﬁndings (Brown & Hedges, 2009). Results
should be published and disseminated, even though they may present ﬁndings contrary
to accepted standards (S. Levy, personal communication, May 3, 2010).

SKILLS NEEDED TO DESIGN AND CONDUCT RESEARCH
As a new researcher, you may wonder whether you have the ability to read, evaluate,
and actually conduct research. Knowing the process of research, you may say, does not
guarantee an adequate research study. Certainly Maria, who is new to research, has these
concerns.
Let me set your mind at ease. You have already learned valuable research skills
through your life experiences. These skills include solving puzzles, employing a long
attention span, using a library, and, of course, writing out your thoughts.

CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

Solving Puzzles
Researchers look at problems as puzzles to solve. The steps in the research process are
viewed as a series of puzzle pieces that the inquirer assembles. You already have skills in
solving puzzles. You ﬁt together the debits and credits to balance your checkbook. As a
parent (or prospective parent), you engage in multiple roles during the day that require
juggling of different tasks. These are puzzles that we work out by breaking them down
into manageable parts (“What will be the demands on my time today?”), setting obtainable objectives (“I will have a busy day at work, so I will focus on my job today”), and
possibly writing them down (“I need to make a list of what I must accomplish today”).
As you examine research studies or engage in the process of inquiry, assembling these
parts of the puzzle—such as ﬁrst working on a research problem and then specifying a
purpose for a study—will require that all of the pieces ﬁt together, as with the many puzzles that we solve in daily living.

Lengthening Your Attention Span
Although we generally make time to complete the tasks we love, our attention span certainly varies from task to task. The process of research involves six steps that may span a
period of 6 months or more. To read through a journal article and identify each of these
steps, for example, requires patience as well as knowledge about what to look for. We
all bring attention spans of varying lengths to the process of research. But if we consider
the tasks we love and the amount of time we devote to them, we can see that we have
already developed an attention span long enough to spend considerable time at research.

Learning to Use Library Resources
The step in the research process that requires you to review the literature means spending time in an academic library. For most of us, going to the library probably began in
grade school with trips to the school library. Engaging in research requires spending
time with library resources, a process that is facilitated by home computers and Internet
connections to library catalogs. But the process of research requires that you use skills
in locating studies, summarizing them, and writing a review of the literature. These skills
are developed during research, if you do not already have them. They develop from our
comfort level with a library and with experiences that began early in our schooling and
continue today.

Writing, Editing, and More Writing
Researchers cannot escape the ever-present aspect of writing as a key facet of research.
As writers, we work through numerous drafts, receive reactions from others, and develop
new drafts. Research involves writing the study for an audience. Do you enjoy writing
and communicating your thoughts? Do you like to write in a journal or a diary? Do you
get satisfaction from completing projects? You have probably written several essays in
college already or worked on a research report with other students or a faculty member.
In short, you have experience in writing. As you know, writing is more than recording
ideas on paper or in a computer ﬁle. It is also organizing ideas, preparing interview
questions, jotting down notes during an observation, and writing for permission to use
someone else’s questions or articles. Writing exists in all phases of the creative process of
planning and in conducting research.

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PART I An Introduction to Educational Research

KEY IDEAS IN THE CHAPTER
The Definition and Importance of Educational Research
Research involves asking a question, collecting data, and analyzing data to determine the
answer to the question. It helps educators understand problems or issues through the
accumulation of knowledge. It can assist educators in improving practice, and it focuses
attention on important policy issues being discussed and debated by decision makers.
Also, engaging in research provides valuable conceptual writing and presenting skills for
students.

The Six Steps in the Process of Research
Six steps are followed when conducting a research study. The study begins with identifying a research problem or issue of study. It then consists of reviewing the literature;
advancing direction through research questions and statements; and collecting, analyzing, and interpreting the data. This process culminates in a research report presented,
evaluated, and potentially used by the educational community.

The Characteristics of Quantitative and Qualitative Research
In quantitative research the major characteristics are: describing a research problem
through a description of trends or a need for an explanation of the relationship among
variables; providing a major role for the literature through suggesting the research questions to be asked and justifying the research problem and creating a need for the direction (purpose statement and research questions or hypotheses) of the study; creating
purpose statements, research questions, and hypotheses that are speciﬁc, narrow, measurable, and observable; collecting numeric data from a large number of people using
instruments with preset questions and responses; analyzing trends, comparing groups,
or relating variables using statistical analysis, and interpreting results by comparing them
with prior predictions and past research; and writing the research report using standard,
ﬁxed structures and evaluation criteria, and taking an objective, unbiased approach.
In qualitative research, we see different major characteristics at each stage of the
research process: exploring a problem and developing a detailed understanding of a central phenomenon; having the literature review play a minor role but justify the problem;
stating the purpose and research questions in a general and broad way so as to the participants’ experiences; collecting data based on words from a small number of individuals so that the participants’ views are obtained; analyzing the data for description and
themes using text analysis and interpreting the larger meaning of the ﬁndings; writing
the report using ﬂexible, emerging structures and evaluative criteria, and including the
researchers’ subjective reﬂexivity and bias.
Although quantitative and qualitative characteristics need to be seen as points on a
continuum rather than opposites, the choice of research between the two is based on
matching the approach to a research problem, ﬁtting the approach to your audience, and
relating the approach to your experiences.

The Types of Research Designs Associated with
Quantitative and Qualitative Research
Researchers tend to employ speciﬁc procedures for data collection, analysis, and report
writing within the quantitative and qualitative approaches. This text emphasizes eight

CHAPTER 1 The Process of Conducting Research Using Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches

research designs: experimental, correlational, survey, grounded theory, ethnographic,
narrative, mixed methods, and action research designs.

The Important Ethical Issues
A need for attention to ethical issues arose out of the inhumane treatment of participants
in past years. As a result, the federal government issued legislation and reports governing
good ethical practices. These guidelines have been supplemented by professional organizational reports. As a result, educational researchers need to anticipate ethical issues
throughout the research process, but they are especially important during data collection
and in writing and disseminating reports.

The Skills Needed to Design and Conduct Research
Research often mirrors the practices found in everyday life, such as solving puzzles,
focusing attention on topics, and practicing good writing and editing. It also involves
learning how to use the academic library and to locate useful literature for a study.

USEFUL INFORMATION FOR PRODUCERS OF RESEARCH
◆ As you plan and conduct a study, keep in mind that research needs to be
valuable to educators. Include comments in your study that convey the value
to speciﬁc educational audiences.
◆ Use the general framework of the six steps for thinking about your plans and the
conduct of research. These six steps make research manageable, help ensure that
you conduct thorough inquiries, and provide a useful strategy for the design and
writing of the research.
◆ As you plan and conduct a study, discuss speciﬁcally the characteristics of the
quantitative and qualitative approach you are using.
◆ Recognize that research is not either all quantitative or all qualitative, but tends
toward one or the other (on a continuum).
◆ Be ethical in conducting research. Respect the rights of participants, research sites,
and individuals who will be readers of your study.
◆ Consider the skills that you need to develop to be a researcher. You may already
have developed the skills of reading and writing, using library resources, solving
puzzles, and focusing in on a topic of interest.

USEFUL INFORMATION FOR CONSUMERS OF RESEARCH
◆ As you examine a study, recognize that authors emphasize different reasons for
undertaking their study. Look for suggestions by the author for practical applications of a study.
◆ Recognize that researchers proceed through a process of research and then
construct sections of a study that reﬂect different steps in this process. For the
research problem, examine the “introduction” to a study; for the literature review,
explore the “literature review” section. For the data collection discussion, visit the
“method” or “procedure” section, and for the data analysis and interpretation, see
the “results” or “ﬁndings” as well as the “discussion” sections.

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PART I An Introduction to Educational Research

◆ Expect that a quantitative study and a qualitative study will not look the same,
because they differ in many of the steps of the research process. At the same
time, they adhere to the same general steps of the overall research process.
◆ Look for statements in the study where the researcher discusses ethical issues that
arose in the study and how they were addressed.

UNDERSTANDING CONCEPTS AND EVALUATING RESEARCH STUDIES
You can test your knowledge of the content of this chapter by answering the following
questions that relate to the parent involvement study and the mothers’ trust in school
principals study. Answers to the questions are found in appendix A so that you can
assess your progress.
1. What preconceptions do you bring to the study of research? List three advantages
and three disadvantages of conducting research.
2. Assume that you are Maria in the introductory scenario in this chapter. List three
steps that you might take to begin your research study.
3. How would the parent involvement study (Deslandes & Bertrand, 2005) be different
if you presented it as a qualitative study? How would the mothers’ trust in school
principals study (Shelden et al., 2010) be different if you presented it as a quantitative study?" Write 1-3 questions, doubts, comments, or ideas from this text