Professional Documents
Culture Documents
What Is Research Design?: Blueprint
What Is Research Design?: Blueprint
What Is Research Design?: Blueprint
Blueprint
Plan
Guide
Framework
6-1
Design in the Research Process
6-2
Types of Research: Degree of
Question Crystallization
Exploratory research is Formal is used when the
used when the research research question is fully
question is still fluid or developed and there are
undetermined. The goal of hypotheses to be examined.
exploration is to develop Descriptive
hypotheses or questions for Explanatory or Causal
future research
Exploratory Study Formal Study
Loose structure Precise procedures
Expand Begins with
understanding hypotheses
Provide insight
Answers research
Develop hypotheses
questions
6-3
Approaches for Exploratory
Investigations
Qualitative research involves
non-quantitative data
collection used to increase
understanding of a topic.
6-4
Approaches for Exploratory
Investigations
The objectives of exploration may be accomplished with
qualitative and quantitative techniques, but exploration
relies more heavily on qualitative techniques
6-5
Approaches for Exploratory
Investigations
• Secondary data analysis is also called a literature
search. Within secondary data exploration, researchers
should start first with an organization’s own data archives.
The second source of secondary data is published
documents prepared by authors outside the sponsor
organization.
• Experience/Expert surveys are semi-structured or
unstructured interviews with experts on a topic or a
dimension of a topic.
• Focus groups are discussions on a topic involving a small
group of participants led by a trained moderator.
6-6
Approaches for Exploratory
Investigations
• A depth interview is a probing between a highly skilled
interviewer and a respondent from the target population to unfold
the underlying opinions, motivations, emotions, or feelings of an
individual respondent on a topic generally coined by the researcher.
• A case study research method actually combines the record
analysis and observations from individual and group interviews. The
case studies become particularly useful when one needs to
understand some particular problem or situation in great depth and
when one can identify the cases rich in information.
• Projective technique is achieved by presenting the respondents
with ambiguous verbal or visual stimulus materials, which they need
to make sense of by drawing from their own experiences, thoughts,
feelings, and imagination before they can offer a response.
6-7
Descriptive Studies
Who?
When? Where?
6-8
Descriptive Studies
Descriptions of population
characteristics
Estimates of frequency of
characteristics
Discovery of associations
among variables
6-9
Causal Research: Experimental Effects
6-10
Mills Method of Agreement
6-11
Mills Method of Agreement
6-12
Mills Method of Difference
6-13
Mills Method of Difference
6-14
Mills Method of Agreement and
Difference
6-15
Evidence of Causation
6-16
Causation and Experimental Design
Control/ Random
Matching Assignment
6-18
Data Collection Method
6-19
Data Collection Method
6-20
The Time Dimension
Cross-sectional
Longitudinal
6-21
The Topical Scope
6-22
The Research Environment