Research Method RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the methodology which was used to solve the problems in this research. This section will comprise research method, research setting, research participants, instrument and data gathering technique, data analysis technique and research procedure.

A. Research Method

To meet the objectives of the study, the researcher used descriptive research as the methodology. Gall, Gall and Borg 2007, p. 300 claim that descriptive research belongs to quantitative research which aims to describe phenomena that happen in educational field. Therefore, usually descriptive research is involved in determining the question ‘what is’ such as what kinds of activities typically occur in sixth-grade art classes? Gall, Gall Borg, 2007, p. 301. Since the purpose of this research is to describe the characteristics of certain phenomena, thus it is not used to test a certain hypothesis Ary, Jacobs, Razaiveh, 1990, p. 381. Moreover, Wiersma 1995, p. 91 states that as a quantitative research, the data will mostly be in the form of numbers and it is designed to enable the researcher to make valid interpretations based on the data. Therefore, to get sufficient data, survey was chosen as a part of the research design. Ary, Jacobs, Razaiveh 1990, p. 381 say that survey belongs to descriptive research. Definition of survey research is proposed by Creswell 2003, 46 p. 153: survey is a type of research which is under quantitative method. It offers numeric descriptions of trends, attitudes or opinions from a population. In conducting the survey, samples of a population is needed to gather the data. And based on the results, the researcher will try to interpret and make some claims and generalizations Ary, Jacobs, Razaiveh, 1990, p. 407. Fraenkal and Wallen 2008, p. 390 say that there are three main characteristics of a survey research: First, the information is gathered from a group of people, as part of a certain population, to investigate and describe some characteristics. Second, asking questions are used as the main way to collect the information. Third, information is collected from samples of a population. By choosing a cross-sectional design as the type of survey, the researcher found out the tendency of semester four students of ELESP in using some strategies to process the meanings of English idioms. The population of this research is all semester four students of ELESP. Therefore, some students of semester four were selected as the samples of all the population. In determining the samples, the researcher used random sampling to avoid the bias of the results. A statement arises regarding the use of questionnaire and interview as the instrument to gather the data. Wallace 2002, p. 124 declares that the use of questionnaire and interview is important when people want to study knowledge, ideas or experiences of a certain population such as students, teachers, community, etc. Hence, in conducting the investigation, the researcher used both questionnaire and interview as the instruments to collect the data. 47

B. Research Setting