Improving High School Students’ Alignment of Qualitative Research Questions, Designs, and Data Sources Through a Feedback-Rich Web-Based Intervention

Samuel John Parreño; Joe Faith Bernardino

doi:10.70148/rise.v3i4.12

Authors

Samuel John Parreño Department of Teacher Education, University of Mindanao, Digos City, Davao del Sur, Philippines Author
Joe Faith Bernardino College of Education, University of Southeastern Philippines, Davao City, Philippines Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.70148/rise.v3i4.12

Keywords:

Formative feedback, Methodological alignment, Web-based intervention, Principal Leadership; Teacher Perceptions; Educational Leadership; Secondary Education; Leadership Capacity; Instructional Leadership, Qualitative research instruction, Secondary education

Abstract

Students who are new to qualitative research often learn the labels of common designs without yet being able to align a research question with an appropriate qualitative approach and a suitable source of information. This classroom intervention study examined whether a feedback-rich web-based tool could improve that alignment skill in an introductory Grade 11 qualitative research course. The intervention was implemented with one intact class in a Philippine public secondary school using a one-group pretest-posttest design. Across both administrations, 54 response files were generated. Because the tool used student-created participant codes rather than named accounts, only records with complete and matchable pretest-posttest codes were retained for the primary analysis, resulting in 26 complete paired cases. The primary outcome was overall alignment score on parallel 10-item forms, each requiring students to select both a qualitative design and a source of information. Mean overall score increased from 7.62 to 12.85 out of 20, for a mean gain of 5.23 points (95% CI [2.96, 7.50], p < .001, d = 1.123). Twenty-three of 26 students improved, one remained unchanged, and two declined. Supporting analyses showed gains in both design selection (3.88 to 6.50 out of 10) and source selection (3.73 to 6.12 out of 10). Brief post-intervention interviews with eight students suggested that improvement was associated with a shift from guess-based responding to cue-based reasoning supported by immediate explanatory feedback. The findings suggest that a lightweight, feedback-rich digital practice environment may support short-term gains in methodological alignment in introductory qualitative research instruction. However, the results should be interpreted cautiously because the study used a single-group, single-class design, an immediate posttest, and a reduced matched analytic sample.

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