RESEARCH

THEORETICAL & CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Conceptual Framework
- It is a bit like a recipe or a blueprint.
- A set of coherent ideas to make it easy to communicate to others
- An organized way of thinking about how and why a project takes place and about how we
understand its activities
- Overview of ideas and practices or a set of assumptions, values, an definitions

Importance of Conceptual Framework:

- Provides an outline of how you plan to conduct the research for your thesis, but it goes further
than that by also positioning your work within the larger field of research.
- Help to guide your thesis to ensure that your research stays on track, but also helps to guide
fellow researchers or advisers who are analyzing your thesis.

Steps in developing a Conceptual Framework:

 Conduct a review of literature
- Before you can start your own research, you need to understand what research has
already been conducted on your topic of interest.
- “Your Research should always be new research that helps to advance your field of study.”

 Create a Flow Chart

  Write a Narrative
- Not all conceptual frameworks have to include a diagram or graphic. You can present the
same information by writing a narrative.
- Narrative – it should be summarize the variables influencing your research and explore how
they may change your hypothesis
- should also explain the basic methodology for your research

Theoretical Framework
- The connection between a theory and the problem
- Serves as a basis as to how the study will be investigated
- Involves the application of the theory, principle or model, to offer an explanation of an event, or
shed some light on a particular phenomenon or research problem.
- The theoretical framework may be further explained and illustrated in concrete terms using a
conceptual framework.
- Theoretical framework introduces and describes the theory that explains why the research
problem under study exists (Swanson, 2013).

Example Theory:
 Self-Perception Theory ( Bem, 1972) in Myes, 1983)
“When one is unsure of his / her attitude, he/she infers it back by looking at behavior and the
circumstances under which it occurs. When a person’s attitude is weak, he/she simply observes
his/her behavior and its circumstances and simply infers what is his/her attitude will be.

o The theory suggests that man’s attitude is influenced by his actions. A child abuser may tend
to have an indifferent attitude towards children.
 MEASUREMENT

Important Role of Measurement in Quantitative Research:

- Very useful since although we can often distinguish between people in terms of extreme
categories, finer distinctions are much more difficult to recognize.
- It can detect clear variations in levels of job satisfaction between people who love their jobs
and people who hate their job but we will find small differences much more difficult to detect

Measurement
- Allows us to delineate fine differences between people in terms of the characteristic in
question.
- Gives us a consistent device or yardstick for making distinctions.
- Measure should generate consistent results, other than those that occur as a result of natural
changes.
- Provides the basis for more precise estimates of the degree of relationship between concepts.

Example:
 Is there a significant mean difference on the weight increment of Eucheuma (Seaweed)
cultured in municipal waters of Estancia, Iloilo, Philippines?

Levels of Measurement:
 Nominal level of measurement
- Identifies variables whose values have no mathematical interpretation; they vary in kind
or quality, but not in amount.
- No order implied in the attributes of the nominal variable.

Example:
A. Variable: Gender has two attributes (categories or qualities) – MALE & FEMALE
Indication:
1 – MALE The numbers simply
2 – FEMALE represent a category

B. Attributes: Hair Color: brown, blond, black, sandy, blond, strawberry blond, red
head, light brown, and dark brown (no order)
 Ordinal level of measurement
- At this level, the numbers assigned to cases specify only the order of cases, permitting
greater than and less than distinctions.
- Ordinal measures are variables with attributes that can be logically rank-ordered.

Example:
Level of education
- Some high school
- High school
- Some college
- College graduate
- Post – graduate
Under the ordinal level of measurement, the distance between categories does not
matter; what matter is that you can rank-order the categories (Babbie,2010,p.36)

 Interval level of measurement

- The values of a variable measured at the interval level of measurement represent fixed
measurement units but have no absolute, or fixed, zero point.
- With interval measures, we can have three sets of data or information. One, we can say
that people are different from one another on this variable. Two, we can also say that
one person is more than another person on this variable. Three, we can also say “how
much” more the person is than the other person.

Example:
Temperature and IQ tests.
 Ratio level of measurement
- Represents fixed measuring units and an absolute zero point (zero means absolutely no
amount of whatever the variable indicates).

Example:
A. Scores on an achievement test (how many points out of 10) can have a score of
zero, indicating a total lack of skills and knowledge on the topic

B. Age, income, length of residency, number of organizations one belongs to, a

number of times you attend church yearly
 SCALES AND INDEXES

Rating scales
- Also known as level of measurement (Bhattacherjee, 2012)
- Used to capture a respondent’s reactions or responses to a given item in the scale.

Nominal scale item - captures a yes/no response

Interval-scale item – captures a value between “strongly agree” (Bhattacherjee, 2012)

Common rating scales:

 Binary Scale
- Is a nominal scale consisting of binary items that assume one of two possible values.
- If employment status is more than two values such as unemployed, full-time, part-time,
and retired, then the scale is no longer binary, but still remains nominal (Bhattacherjee,
2012)

Example:
- Yes/No, True/False and so on.
- Male/Female (gender)
- Full-time/part-time (employment status)

 Likert Scale
- Designed by Rensis Likert
- Are simply worded statements to which respondents can indicate their extent of
agreement or disagreement on a five-or-seven-point scale ranging from “strongly agree”
to “strongly disagree”.
 Semantic differential Scale
- Composite or multi item scale.
- Respondents are typically asked to indicate their opinions or feelings toward a single
statement using different pairs of adjectives framed as polar opposites or two extremes.
- Semantic differential scales are used in social sciences research as an excellent
technique for measuring people’s attitude or feelings toward events, objects, or
behaviors (Bhattacherjee, 2012).

 Guttman Scale
- A composite or multi item scale designed by Louis Guttman.
- Uses series of items arranged in increasing order of intensity of the concept of interest,
from least intense to most intense.
- Each item in the series has a weight which varies with the intensity of that item.
 SAMPLING PROBABILITY

Sampling
- is the statistical process of selecting a subset (called a sample) of a population for interest for
purposes of making observations and statistical inferences about that population

Population
- is the group you want to generalize to

Sample
- refers to the actual units selected for observation (Bhattacherjee (2012, p. 65).

“Since it is impossible to study entire populations due to feasibility and cost concerns, it becomes necessary to
select a representative sample from the population of interest for observation and analysis. Quantitative
research sampling is based only on random sampling.”

Random sampling
- is defined as that method of drawing a portion (sample) of a population so that all possible
samples of a fixed size have the same probability of being selected

The three stages in the sampling process are:

1. Defining the target population
- The unit of analysis may be a person, group, organization, country, object, or any other entity
that one wishes to draw inferences from

2. Choosing a sampling frame

- Is the list from which you can draw your sample
- Usually the list contains the accessible section of the target population from where a sampke
can be drawn, and consequently, where inferences can be based

3. Choosing a sample from the sampling frame using a well-defined sampling technique
- There are two broad types of sampling techniques
 Probability (random) sampling
 Nonprobability sampling
- Probability sampling is a must if the study aims at the generalizability of results

Probability sampling
- Is a technique in which ever unit in the population has a chance of being selected in the
sample, and this chance can be accurately determined

“Sampling statistics thus produced, such as a sample mean or standard deviation, are unbiased estimates of
population parameters as long as the sampled units are weighted according to their probability of selection.”

All probability sampling have two attributes in common:

 Every unit in the population has a known nonzero probability of being sampled
 The sampling procedure involves random selection at some point
Sampling Description Advantages Disadvantages
Technique

Simple random Random sample Highly Not possible

from whole representative if all without complete
population subjects list of population
participates; the members;
ideal uneconomical to
achieve
Stratified random Random sample Can ensure that More complex;
from identifiable specific groups are requires greater
groups (strata), represented, even effort than simple
subgroups, etc. proportionally, in random; strata
the sample(s) (e.g., must be carefully
by gender) by defined
selecting
individuals from
strata list
Cluster Random samples Possible to select Clusters in a level
of successive randomly when no must be equivalent
clusters of subjects single list of but some natural
(e.g., by institution) population ones are not for
until small groups members exists but essential
are chosen as units local lists do characteristics
(e.g., geographic;
numbers equal but
unemployment
rates differ)
Stage Combination of Can make up Complex,
cluster and probability sample combines
stratified random by random at limitations of
stages and within clusters and
groups stratified random
sampling

Simple random sampling

- The simplest and yet the most generalizable among all probability sampling techniques
- The recommended way of selecting a sample via the simple random sampling technique is by
using a random numbers table, usually found as appendix in quantitative research methods
and statistics books
 Selecting a Sample through Probability Sampling Techniques

Sampling technique Process/ procedure

Simple random In this technique, all possibilities subsets
of a population are given an equal
probability of being selected. Simple
random sampling involves randomly
selecting respondents from a sampling
frame. But with the large sampling
frames, usually a table of random
numbers or a computerized random
number generator is used.
Systematic In this technique, the sampling frame is
ordered according to some criteria and
elements are selected at regular intervals
through that ordered list.
This involves a random start and then
proceeds with the selection of every kth
element from that point onwards, where
K= N/n, where k is the ratio of sampling
frame size N and the desired sample n,
and is formally called the sampling ratio.
It is important that the starting point is not
automatically the first in the list but is
instead randomly chosen from within the
first k elements on the list.

Stratified random In the stratified sampling, the sampling

frame is divided into homogeneous and
nonoverlapping subgroups ( called
“strata”), and a simple random sample is
drawn within each subgroup.
Nonproportional stratified is used
because the proportion of sample within
each subgroup does not reflect the
proportions in the sampling frame (or the
population of interest), and the smaller
subgroup (large-sized films) is
oversampled
Cluster If you have a population dispersed over a
wide geographic region, it may not be
feasible to conduct a simple random
sampling of the entire population. In such
case, it may be reasonable to divide the
populations into “clusters” (usually along
the geographic boundaries), randomly
sample a few clusters, and measure all
units within cluster.
Example you can cluster these
governments based on their countries,
randomly select a set of the tree
 countries, and then interview officials
from every official in those countries.
The variability of sample estimates in a
cluster sample will generally be higher
than that of a simple random sample.
Stage The probability sampling techniques
described previously are all examples of
single-stage sampling techniques.
Depending on your sampling need, you
may continue these single-stage
techniques to conduct multi stage
sampling.

For instance, you can stratify a list of

businesses based on firm size, and then
conduct systematic sampling within each
stratum. This is a two-stage combination
of stratified and systematic sampling.
Likewise, you can start with a cluster of
school district in the state of New York,
and within each cluster, select a simple
random sample of schools. In this case,
you have a four-stage sampling process
consisting of cluster and simple random
sampling.
 TYPES OF QUANTITATIVE DATA COLLECTION

Data Collection
- The process of gathering and measuring information on targeted variables in an established
systematic fashion.
- it is important because it is one way to come up with answers, which come in the form of
useful information, converted from data.

Types of Data Collection:

 Quantitative Surveys
 Quantitative Observation
 Experiments
 Official Statistics
 Content Analysis

Quantitative Surveys
- Methods emphasize objective measurements and the statistical, mathematical, or numerical
analysis of data.
- It has two types which is the questionnaire and the interview survey.

Questionnaires
- A research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of
gathering information from respondents.
- They are often designed for statistical analysis of the responses

Interview Survey
- A survey method that is utilized when a specific target population is involved.
- The purpose of conducting a personal interview survey is to explore the responses of the
people to gather more and deeper information.

Three types of Interviews:

1. Face to Face interview
- Is a data collection method when the interviewer directly communicates with the
respondent in accordance with the prepared questionnaire.
2. Telephone and/or online, web-based interviews
- Is an interview conducted on the phone or on the computer-mediated communication
(CMC).
3. Computer-assisted interviews
- Is an interviewing technique in which the respondent or interviewer uses a computer to
answer the questions.

Quantitative Observation
- Data may be collected through systematic observation by, say counting the number of users
present and currently accessing services in a specific area.
- it mostly involves using the senses and keen observation skills to get data about the “what”,
and not really about the “why” and “how”.

Three types of Experiments:

1. Laboratory experiments
- Is a type of experiment is conducted in a well-controlled environment (not necessarily a
laboratory), where accurate measurements are possible.
 2. Field Experiment
- Is applies the scientific method to experimentally examine an intervention in the real
world (or as many experimentalists like to say, naturally occurring environments) rather
than in the laboratory.
3. Natural experiments
- An empirical study in which individuals exposed to the experimental and control
conditions are determined by nature or by other factors outside the control of the
investigators.

Official Statistics
- The use and analysis of official statistics for purposes of social research is another alternative
to collecting data.
- They can be classified as a form of unobtrusive measure/method.

Content Analysis
- It is a method by which some observable contents, such as texts, images, objects, etc. are
transferred through coding into a measurable and verifiable form.
- The process of conducting a content analysis follows the general research process of
quantitative inquiries.

Quantitative Model (deductive)