QUALITATIVE RESEARCH DESIGNS

Design is a word which means a plan or something that is conceptualized by the mind. As a result of a mental activity characterized by unfixed formation of something
but an extensive interconnection of things, a design in the field of research serves as a blueprint or a skeletal framework of your research study. It includes many related
aspects of your research work.

A choice of a research design requires you to finalize your mind on the purpose, philosophical basis, and types of data of your research, including your method of
collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting the data. It is a plan that directs your mind to several stages of your research work. (De Mey 2013)

1. Case Study

To do a research study based on this research design is to describe a person, a thing, or any creature on Earth for the purpose of explaining the reasons behind the
nature of its existence.

Your methods of collecting data for this qualitative research design are interview, observation, and questionnaire.

2. Ethnography

It involves a study of a certain cultural group or organization in which you, the researcher, to obtain knowledge about the characteristics, organizational set-up, and
relationships of the group members, must necessarily involve you in their group activities.

Ethnography requires your actual participation in the group members'

activities while a case study treats you, the researcher, as an outsider whose role is just to observe the group. Realizing this qualitative research design is living with the
subjects in several months; hence, this is usually done by anthropologists whose interests basically lie in cultural studies. (Winn 2014)

3. Historical Study

This qualitative research design tells you the right research method to determine the reasons for changes or permanence of things in the physical world in a certain
period (i.e., years, decades, or centuries). What is referred to in the study as time of changes is not a time shorter than a year but a period indicating a big number of
years. Obviously, historical study differs from other research designs because of this one element that is peculiar to it, the scope. The scope or coverage of a historical
study refers to the number of years covered, the kind of events focused on, and the extent of new knowledge or discoveries resulting from the historical study. Example:

A Five-year Study of the Impact of the K-12 Curriculum on the Philippine Employment System

The data collecting techniques for a study following a historical research design are biography or autobiography reading, documentary analysis, and chronicling activities
- this makes you interview people to trace series of events in the lives of people in a span of time.

4. Phenomenology

A phenomenon is something you experience on Earth as a person. It is a sensory experience that makes you perceive or understand things that naturally occur in your
life such as death, joy, friendship, caregiving, defeat, victory, and the like. This qualitative research design makes you follow a research method that will let you
understand the ways of how people go through inevitable events in their lives. You are prone to extending your time in listening to people's recount of their significant
experiences to be able to get a clue or pattern of their techniques in coming to terms with the positive or negative results of their life experiences.

Unstructured interview is what this research design directs you to use in collecting data. (Paris 2014; Winn 2014)

5. Grounded Theory

A research study adhering to a grounded theory research design aims at developing a theory to increase your understanding of something in a psycho-social context.

A study using a grounded theory design is done by a researcher wanting to know how people fair up in a process-bound activity such as writing. Collecting data based
on this qualitative research design called grounded theory is through formal, informal, or semi-structured interview, as well as analysis of written works, notes, phone
calls, meeting proceedings, and training sessions. (Picardie 2014)

SAMPLING TECHNIQUE

In research, sampling is a word that refers to your method or process of selecting respondents or people to answer questions meant to yield data for a research study.

The bigger group from where you choose the sample is called population, and sampling frame is the term used to mean the list of the members of such population
from where you will get the sample. (Paris 2013)

Probabilty Sampling or Unbiased Sampling – It involves all members listed in the sampling frame representing a certain population focused on by your study. An equal
chance of participation in the sampling or selection process is given to every member listed in the sampling frame. By means of this unbiased sampling, you are able to
obtain a sample that is capable of representing the population under study or of showing strong similarities in characteristics with the members of the population.

A sampling error crops up if the selection does not take place in the way it is planned.

Types of Probability Sampling

1. Simple Random Sampling

Simple random sampling is the best type of probability sampling through which you can choose sample from a population. Using a pure-chance selection, you assure
every member the same opportunity to be in the sample. Here, the only basis of including or excluding a member is by chance or opportunity, not by any occurrence
accounted for by cause-effect relationships.

2. Systematic Sampling

For this kind of probability sampling, chance and system are the ones to determine who should compose the sample. For instance, if you want to have a sample of 150,
you may select a set of numbers like 1 to 15, and out of a list of 1,500 students, take every 15th name on the list until you complete the total number of respondents
to constitute your sample.

3. Stratified Sampling

The group comprising the sample is chosen in a way that such group is liable to subdivision during the data analysis stage. A study needing group by-group analysis
finds stratified sampling the right probability sampling to use.

4. Cluster Sampling

This is a probability sampling that makes you isolate a set of persons instead of individual members to serve as sample members. For example, if you want to have a
sample of 120 out of 1,000 students, you can randomly select three sections with 40 students each to constitute the sample.

Non-Probability Sampling - It disregards random selection of subjects. The subjects are chosen based on their availability or the purpose of the study, and in some
cases, on the sole discretion Of the researcher. This is not a scientific way of selecting
reSP0ndents. Neither does it offer a valid or an objective way of detecting sampling errors. (Edmond 2013)

Types of Non-Probability Sampling

1. Quota Sampling

You resort to Quota sampling when you think you know the characteristics of the target population very well. In this case, you tend to choose sample members
possessing or indicating the characteristics of the target population.

Using a quota or a specific set of persons whom you believe to have the characteristics of the target population involved in the study is your way of showing that the
sample you have chosen closely represents the target population as regards such characteristics.

2. Voluntary Sampling

Since the subjects you expect to participate in the sample selection are the ones volunteering to constitute the sample, there is no need for you to
do any selection process.

3. Purposive or Judgmental Sampling

You choose people whom you are sure could correspond to the objectives of your study, like selecting those with rich experience or interest in your study.

4. Availability Sampling

The willingness of person as your subject to interact with you counts a lot in this non-probability sampling method. If during the data-collection time, you encounter
people walking on a school campus, along corridors, and along the park or employees lining up at an office, and these people show willingness to respond to your
questions, then you automatically consider them as your respondents.

5. Snowball Sampling

Similar to snow expanding widely or rolling rapidly, this sampling method does not give a specific set of samples. This kind of non-probability sampling is free to obtain
data from any group just like snow freely expanding and accumulating at a certain place, you tend to increase the number of people you want to form the sample of
your study. (Harding 2013)