Research Design

(Part One)

Sivakami M
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 Introduction
• Any research is valid when its conclusions
are true

• It is reliable when the findings are repeatable

• Reliability and validity of the research

require the planning of inquiry, i.e., the
detailed strategy of how the research will be
conducted

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 Meaning of research design

• ‘Design’ means “drawing an outline” or

planning or arranging

Therefore, ‘Research Design’ is planning

a strategy of conducting research

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 Research Design

• William Zikmund has described

research design as “a master plan
specifying the methods and procedures
for collecting and analyzing the needed
information”.

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 What are plans?
• Plans as to: what is to be observed, how it is to be
observed, when/where it is to be observed, why it is to
be observed, how to record observations, how to
analyze/interpret observations, and how to generalize.

• Therefore, research design is, thus, a detailed plan of

how the goals of research will be achieved.

• RD is the glue that holds the research project together

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 Example (Maternal health)
• Interested in studying “Maternal health”
• Worth studying

• What specifically are you interested in?

• Awareness or access or healthcare systems or policies

• What do you mean by “Maternal health”

• Are all aspects of MH is included or only part of it?

• Whom do you want to study

• Recently delivered mother or all mothers or men or healthcare
providers or policy and programme makers

• What do you want to find out?

• Level of awareness or access or why is it at that level?
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 Fundamental types of research
questions
• Social sciences or social researchers ask
two fundamental types of research
questions

– What is going on
• (explorative or descriptive research)

– Why is it going on?

• explanatory research
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 Purpose of Research
• Social research can serve many purposes.
• Three of the most and common and useful
purposes are

• Exploration
• Description
• Explanation

• A given study can have more than one of these

purposes. 8
Explorative study or research

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 Exploration
• Research is conducted to explore a topic, that
is, to start to familiarize a researcher with that
topic

• This approach typically occurs when a

researcher examines a new interest or when the
subject of study itself is relatively new or when
little is known about a situation or a problem

• Generally, small scale and short duration

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 Examples
• Two health centres that are functioning well and two
that do not function satisfactorily. We are interested
to detect the possible reasons.

• One community with high and another with low

participation in health (Family Planning Programme).
We are interested to know what levels and degrees of
support are there within the community? What kinds
of people are active in? How widespread is it?

• An exploratory study could help you find at least

approximate answers to some of these questions.
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• Much, but not all, exploratory
research is qualitative. It can be
pursued through the use of
focus groups, or small group
discussions.

• For example, 40 mothers who

delivered in a maternity ward
and 40 who deliver in a home.
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 Purpose of exploratory study

• To satisfy the researcher's curiosity

and desire for better understanding.

• To test the feasibility of undertaking a

more extensive research.

• To develop the methods to be

employed in any subsequent study.
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 Types of exploratory studies
• According to Selltiz et al (1976)

• Review of available literature (published

literature)

• Expert surveys (who have substantial

knowledge and experience in the area although
their findings have not been published)

• Case studies (In order to collect information for

the main study)

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 Types of exploratory studies
• According to Zikmund (1988)

• Experience surveys (discuss research issues

with other researcher who has done some work
on the same area; known as “Expert Survey
Research”)

• Secondary data analysis (secondary sources like

books, documentations, reports and so on;
known as “Literary Review Research”)

• Pilot studies (serves as a guide for a larger study)

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 Advantage and Shortcomings
• Advantage:
– Exploratory studies are essential whenever a
researcher is breaking new ground, and they
almost always yield new insights into a topic for
research.

• Short comings
– The chief shortcoming of exploratory studies is that they
rarely provide satisfactory answers to research
questions
– they can only hint at the answers and can suggest which research methods
could provide definite answers. This is because of lack of representativeness
(try to understand).
– Once you understand the representativeness, you as a researcher will be
able to know whether a given exploratory study answered its research
problem or only pointed toward an answer
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Descriptive study or research

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 Description
• A descriptive study involves the systematic collection
and presentation of data to give a clear picture of a
particular situation.

• Descriptive studies can be carried out on a small or large

scale.

• A major purpose of many research studies is to describe

situations and events. The researcher observes and then
describes what was observed.

• Scientific descriptions are typically more accurate and

precise than casual.
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 Examples

• When a new disease is recognized, the

main purpose may be to describe the
nature of the disease and to evaluate
the probable means of transmission,
reservoir and natural history.

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 Examples
• Indian census is an excellent example of descriptive
research. The goal of census is to describe
accurately and precisely a wide variety of
characteristics of the Indian population, as well as
the populations of smaller areas such as
states/Districts.

• It can be at one point of time or more than one point

of time period.

• Many qualitative studies aim primarily at description.

For example, descriptive case studies. A case may
be a patient, a health centre, or a village.
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 Examples
• computation of age-gender profiles of
populations

• computation of sexually transmitted

disease for different states.

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 Short comings
• Limited to a merely descriptive purpose.

• Researchers usually go on to examine why

the observed patterns exist and what they
imply.

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 Examples
• Case Reports

• HIV/AIDS: Efficacy of Bone Marrow

Transplant in an HIV-Infected Patient

• From Description to explanation

– A good description provokes the “WHY”
question

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Explanation

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 Explanation

• The third general purpose of research is to

explain the things.

• Descriptive studies answer the questions of

what, where, when, and how; explanatory
questions of why.

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 Example
why some states have higher prevalence
of safe delivery than other states. It
involves an explanation.

We can examine through relationship

between variables (correlation).

Cause and effect relationship in a

multivariate framework.
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 Example
• Crime rate
• One way of doing is
• Describe the crime rate and examine the trends
over time
• Compare rates across countries
• Another way (which very different)
• Develop explanations for high or low crime rate
• Why the crime rate is high is certain countries
than countries?
• Why certain types of crime are increasing?
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 Example
• What factors do you suppose might shape people’s
attitudes toward the legalization alcohol?

• To answer this, you might first consider whether

men and women differ in their opinions.

• This study could be Exploratory Study if this issue is

rarely explored in that population.

• Why the attitude differ between men and women?

• One needs to go for explanatory research

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• Answering the why questions involves
developing “causal” explanations

– What is causal?
• Phenomenon Y depends is affected by factor X

• Income level (example for Y)

• Gender (example for X)

– Some causal relationships are simple and some are

complex 29
Direct causal relationship

• Income
Gender level

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 Indirect casual relationship: a
causal chain

Promoti
Gender Field of Occup on Income
training ation opportu level
nities

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A more complex casual model of
direct and indirect causal links

Field of
training
Occupatio
n

Gender Income
Level

Child Part time

care or full time
responsib work
ility

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 Criteria for Causality

• Correlation
• the variables must be correlated
• Time order
• Causal relationship exists unless the cause
precedes the effect in time
• Nonspurious
• The effect that can not be explained in terms of
some third variable
• A coincidental statistical correlation between
two variables, shown to be caused by some
third variable
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 Example of Nonspurious
• Relationship between shoe size and
math skill.
• age of the individual is the third variable.

• Correlation between rats and birth

rates. Areas with many rats have
high birth rates.
• The third variable is place of residence
(Rural/Urban)

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 Example
• Correlation between Ice cream and
deaths due to drowning (especially in
developed countries)

• No direct link between these two

variables
• Season or temperature is the third
variable
• Most drowning occurs during summer

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 False criteria for causality

• When social researchers say that one

variable causes another, they do not
necessarily mean to suggest complete
causation.

• Complete causation: If we say that education

may affect the utilization of health care
services. Thus, we say that education is one
of the causes of utilization of health services,
but not the only one.

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 Example

• Utilizing of ANC services by females.

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 Cont…

• Being female is a necessary condition of

utilizing ANC services because male
cannot.

• But it is not a sufficient cause. Otherwise,

all women who are pregnant would utilize
ANC

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• The discovery of a cause that is both
necessary and sufficient is, of course, the
most satisfying outcome in research.

• Unfortunately, we never discover single

causes that are absolutely necessary and
absolutely sufficient when analyzing the
relationship among variables.

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