Category: Methodology

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Methodology Research Process

Earn Your Degree Moments

While I was very tired I went to my wife and told her I feel I am a Ph.D. now. I was working on my findings and I realized that night that I fully understood what I was doing. I realized it’s the degree moments.

There is a degree moment in your journey when you will feel that you have transformed from the person who started the program to the person who earned his or her degree.  Officially, you earn your degree when your thesis or dissertation is approved.  Publicly, you earn your degree after you walk down the aisle at your graduation ceremony.  However, you truly earn your degree at the moment when you realize that you have completed your study.

The moment you earn your degree is a special moment.  It’s your degree moment. You will likely be very tired, yet you will be enjoying the work on your thesis.  That moment is for you to celebrate.  It means you just have to finish the writing.

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Methodology Qualitative Research Quantitative Research

Mixed Method

This article addresses the quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method approaches to data collection and methodology.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative

Qualitative research occurs when you explore.  The key idea is to explore or find out.  On the other hand, quantitative research occurs when you want to examine.  The key idea is examination.

Qualitative research will give you the opportunity to go deep into a subject and investigate what is call phenomena.  A phenomenon is a fact that appears to you upon your research.  If you open your eyes after the rain, you may see a rainbow.  This phenomenon appears in the sky.  You may need to explore this phenomenon and write your thesis about it.  So all the people who come after you can build on the phenomena you found.15

Quantitative research will give you the opportunity to collect data about something specific to reach a generalization.  For example, if you had discovered the rainbow, you may decide to collect data about it.  You may then have concluded that there is association between rain and rainbows.  The generalization, a rainbow always appears after the rain, would have been new knowledge that the study found.

In qualitative research, you may use an interview, observations, and deep digging in a fact-finding journey.  While in quantitative research you may survey, measure, and check a specific phenomenon to reach a lasting conclusion.


Mixed Method

A mixed study occurs when you want to achieve both quantitative and qualitative research simultaneously.  For example, you want to investigate the colors that appear in the sky after rain.  You may want to explore the topic first.  Then you reveal the rainbow.  After that, you want to generalize this phenomenon by conducting quantitative research.

Here’s another example: you may be wondering why students do poorly on their exams.  You may want to explore this phenomenon by interviewing students who do poorly in their exams.  During this journey, you find out they have many absences.  Now you can say that you found a pattern that students who have done poorly on their exams missed many classes.  Then you want to generalize that students who attend classes do better on their exams.  This generalization requires a quantitative research to examine and to verify that student performance is related to student attendance.   Then you can survey students in a variety of circumstances, places and situations.  The survey will check their performance and their attendance.  After that, statistical tests will be conducted to reach a conclusion that this relationship was not due to coincidence.

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Conclusions Methodology Research Process

Causation vs. Correlation

So what is this causation correlation confusion?

When it rains, you get wet. When it does not rain, you do not get wet. Every time it rains, you get wet. Of course, while you are under the skies. This is causation. You can see the logic that if every time X happens, then Y has to happen. If any time X did not happen, we never see Y.

Correlation, on the other hand, is the fact that Y and X get together. It does not necessarily mean one affects the other. Rather, a third factor, such as Z influences them both. For example, you might get wet, and you might see the rainbow. These two correlate but they do not cause each other. The rain could cause both to happen, yet rain falls and then cease after some time, likewise the rainbow, it’s clearly seen in the sky after it rains.

It is important to distinguish between the causation relationship and the correlation relationship. You have to be very specific when you use this terminology because its meaning is very different.

For example, as people get jobs their happiness is raised. A research may reach this conclusion after surveying people about their work status, and their happiness level. A relationship can be measured using correlation analysis. Now, the correlation analysis may show a significant association between these two variables. Yet, we cannot claim that because people have jobs, they are happy. Even though, it makes sense that when people have a job, their happiness increases. The causation conclusion would require much work to prove, yet correlation can be sufficient to confirm your point, which says there is association between having a job and one’s happiness.