WHAT IS RESEARCH DESIGN?

Source of research ideas how you will answer the RQ

Prior research

Need to know/own experience

curiosity

Statement of the

problem/ research question

Research design methodology

Population & sample

Instrumentation or source of info

Data collection procedures

Data analysis/ reporting

procedures

Findings, conclusions, recommendations & implications

RESEARCH DESIGN

Research design is a formal plan of action for a research project.

Research designs help researchers to lay out their research questions, methodologies, implementation procedures, and data collection and analysis for the conduct of a research project.

The research design is the master plan specifying the methods and procedures for collecting and analyzing the needed information.

RESEARCH DESIGN DECISIONS INFLUENCED BY

the questions the investigator is trying to answer,

the resources such as time, trained personnel, money that the researcher have at

hand, the characteristics of the research

sites, the researcher's personal preferences.

there are three types of research design: quantitative design, qualitative design and mixed methods design

Researcher should choose from many design alternatives and consider over the trade-offs of each approach and decide the best possible solution.

• Some author categorize research design based on the objectives of the research and how much is known about the problem and these objectives. Three traditional categories of research design:

• Exploratory• Descriptive• Causal

• The overall research design for a project may include one or more of these three designs as part(s) of it.

• Further, if more than one design is to be used, typically we progress from Exploratory toward Causal.

BASIC RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH DESIGN

Research Objective Appropriate Design

To gain background information, to define terms, to clarify Exploratory

problems and develop hypotheses, to establish research priorities, to develop questions to be answered

To describe and measure marketing phenomena at a point Descriptivein time

To determine causality, test hypotheses, to make “if-then” Causal

statements, to answer questions

RESEARCH DESIGN: EXPLORATORY RESEARCH

• Exploratory research is most commonly unstructured, “informal” research that is undertaken to gain background information about the general nature of the research problem.

• Exploratory research is usually conducted when the researcher does not know much about the problem and needs additional information or desires new or more recent information.

• Exploratory research is used in a number of situations:• To gain background information• To define terms• To clarify problems and hypotheses• To establish research priorities

• A variety of methods are available to conduct exploratory research:• Secondary Data Analysis• Experience Surveys• Case Analysis• Focus Groups• Projective Techniques (used to

understand the inner feelings, emotions and subconscious attitudes of the respondents to chosen stimuli eg. drawing pictures, party exercise, clay modeling etc)

RESEARCH DESIGN: DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH

• Descriptive research is undertaken to provide answers to questions of who, what, where, when, and how – but not why.

• Two basic classifications:• Cross-sectional studies • Longitudinal studies

RESEARCH DESIGN: DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCHCROSS-SECTIONAL STUDIES

• Cross-sectional studies measure units from a sample of the population at only one point in time.

• Sample surveys are cross-sectional studies whose samples are drawn in such a way as to be representative of a specific population.

• On-line survey research is being used to collect data for cross-sectional surveys at a faster rate of speed.

RESEARCH DESIGN: DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCHLONGITUDINAL STUDIES

• Longitudinal studies repeatedly draw sample units of a population over time.

• One method is to draw different units from the same sampling frame.

• A second method is to use a “panel” where the same people are asked to respond periodically.

• Eg. On-line survey research firms recruit panel members to respond to online queries.

RESEARCH DESIGN: DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCHLONGITUDINAL STUDIES

• Two types of panels:• Continuous panels ask panel members the same

questions on each panel measurement.• Discontinuous panels vary questions from one

time to the next. • Longitudinal data used for:

• trend • Attitude etc.

RESEARCH DESIGN: CAUSAL RESEARCH

• Causality may be thought of as understanding a phenomenon in terms of conditional statements of the form “If x, then y.”

• Causal relationships are typically determined by the use of experiments, but other methods are also used.

RESEARCH DESIGN: QUAL, QUANT & MIX METHOD

Research design

qualitative quantitative

Combo (mixed

method)

Quantitative: data in numbers; Qualitative: data in words; Multimethod: data in both forms

MULTIMETHOD

For example, if you are doing a study where you will be rating students (numerically) on their performance of a sensory-motor skill

AND also interviewing these students (data in words) to determine how they perceive their own skill levels, then at least one "design methodology label" that would apply is multimethod.

Qualitative/ quantitative/ multimethod

correlationdescriptiveGroup

comparison

survey observational

Quasi- experimen

tal

True experiment

al

Ex post facto

(causal compara

tive)

DESCRIPTIVE DESIGNS

Descriptive problem statement use descriptive research design methodology

Key characteristics: what is; identifying; exploratory type studies.

Example: This study is to identify the perceived barriers to successful implementation of the Career Ladder Teacher Incentive & Development Program in X School District.

SURVEY

applies to any study be they quant/qual/both recorded via any form of what we think of as "survey instrumentation."

They can take many forms: Check-off items (e.g., gender, position); Fill-in-the-blank items; Likert-type scales (e.g., on a 5-point scale, say, from "strongly

disagree" to "strongly agree," you're asked to circle or check your opinion regarding a statement such as, "The Career Ladder Teacher Incentive and Development Program provides ample opportunity for teacher advancement in my district")

Open-ended fill-in items (you're asked to give a response in your own words,

TYPES OF SURVEY RESEARCH

often these surveys are self administered they are sometimes "administered" orally in a

face-to-face or telephone interview (e.g., the researcher records your answers herself)

If the responses were collected in the form of a survey using Likert-scaled attitudinal items or open-ended questions where the teachers are asked to share the perceived barriers in their own words -- then the study would be characterized as a descriptive survey design methodology.

OBSERVATIONAL

instead of administering a survey instrument, the researcher collects data by observing/tallying/recording the occurrence or incidence of some outcome -- perhaps with the aid of assistants.

He might want to identify the most frequently occurring type(s) of disruptive behavior in a particular classroom. With clear prior agreement on what constitutes such "disruptive behavior“.

the researcher could develop a listing of such behaviors and observe and record the number of times each one occurred in a particular observation session in a classroom. (Again, he might wish to 'compare notes' with assistants in order to enhance reliability or verifiability -- e.g., as a cross-check for accuracy).

This type of research would be called of not only descriptive (due to the 'identify/what is but also observational due to the recording/ tallying protocol.

qualitative-type observations can also be recorded. They don't have to be strictly numeric tallies. Examples, case notes of counselors, where they record their perceptions in words.

CORRELATIONAL DESIGNS

these "link" to the keywords of "association," "relationship," and/or "predictive ability" that we've come to associate with "correlational" research questions or problem statements!

GROUP COMPARISONS

talked about experiments generally: tight control (the researcher attempts to

identify in advance as many possible 'contaminating' and/or confounding variables as possible and to control for them in his design -- by, say, building them in and balancing on them -- equal numbers of boys and girls to 'control for gender' -- or 'randomizing them away' by drawing a random sample of subjects and thereby 'getting a good mix' on them -- e.g., all levels of 'socioeconomic status')

we have 2 or more groups. We measure them before and after this treatment and if we do find a difference in the group.

TRUE EXPERIMENTAL

randomly draw (select) individuals for your study AND then randomly assign these individuals to 2 or more groups (e.g., 'you have the power to make the groups' yourself).

QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL

The researcher will make use of groups that already exist, such as two different classes in the same school or the same grade level in two different schools.

This design is identical to the pretest-posttest control-group design except that the participants are not randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups.

When using this design the researcher should describe the characteristics of the existing groups in detail to inform readers of any differences between the groups that could affect the results.

EX POST FACTO (CAUSAL COMPARATIVE)

We identify some sort of outcome and wonder 'what makes it vary like that?' For instance, if we 'divided' the responses by gender, would that account for the difference we see?

Simply an attempt to see if a grouping that we had no prior control over seems to "make a difference" on some outcome(s)!

CRITERIA TO JUDGE RESEARCH DESIGNS Theory-grounded. Good research design

finds its roots in theories, that is, it has the power to test the existing theories

Situational--reflects the setting of the investigation. The design comes up with strategies to cope with situational threats to validity such as "intergroup rivalry, competition".

Feasible. Good research design takes reality into account. The design anticipates potential problems in implementation, measurement and if necessary, includes additional groups or measurements.

Redundant. Good research designs duplicate some essential design features.

Efficient. Good research designs also refrain themselves from overdesign.

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