DEFINITION OF RESEARCH DESIGN

The research design refers to the overall strategy that you choose to integrate the different components of the study in a coherent and logical way, thereby, ensuring you will effectively address the research problem; it constitutes the blueprint for the collection, measurement, and analysis of data. It must be noted that your research problem determines the type of design you can use, not the other way around.

The function of a research design is to ensure that the evidence obtained enables you to effectively address the research problem as unambiguously as possible. In social sciences research, obtaining evidence relevant to the research problem generally entails specifying the type of evidence needed to test a theory, to evaluate a program, or to accurately describe a phenomenon.

However, researchers can often begin their investigations far too early, before they have thought critically about what information is required to answer the study's research questions. Without attending to these design issues beforehand, the conclusions drawn risk being weak and unconvincing and, consequently, will fail to adequate address the overall research problem.

Need For A Research Design:

Any research design can, in principle, use any type of data collection method and can use either quantitative or qualitative data. Research design refers to the structure of an enquiry: it is a logical matter rather than a logistical one. It has been argued that the central role of research design is to minimize the chance of drawing incorrect causal inferences from data. When designing research it is essential that we identify the type of evidence required to answer the research question in a convincing way. This means that we must not simply collect evidence that is consistent with a particular theory or explanation. Research needs to be structured in such a way that the evidence also bears on alternative rival explanations and enables us to identify which of the competing explanations is most compelling empirically. It also means that we must not simply look for evidence that supports our favourite theory: we should also look for evidence that has the potential to disprove our preferred explanations.

Pre-requisites Of A Good Research Design:

1. Flexibility to include a wide range of data for processing.

2. Appropriate for the study in question

3. Efficient and economical

4. Minimal bias of data and maximum reliability

5. Design which gives the smallest experimental error is supposed to be the best design in many investigations.

6. Helps identify the research problem and give its justification clearly.

7. Must help in review of previously published literature associated with the problem area.

8. Must help in clearly and explicitly specify hypotheses [i.e., research questions] central to the problem selected

9. It should be able to effectively describe the data which will be necessary for an adequate test of the hypotheses and explain how such data will be obtained.

Factors To Be Considered When Making A Choice Of Suitable Research Design:

1. The means of obtaining information.

2. The availability and skills of the researcher and his staff, if any;

3. The objective of the problem to be studied,

4. The nature of the problem to be studied; and

5. The availability of time and money for the research work.

TYPES OF RESEARCH DESIGNS:

The different types of research designs include

1. Experimental

2. Exploratory

3. Descriptive

4. Action Research

5. Case Study Design

6. Causal Design

7. Cohort Design

8. Cross- Sectional Design

9. Historical

10. Longitudinal

11. Observational

12. Philosophical

13. Sequential

Sometimes a distinction is made between "fixed" and "flexible" or, synonymously, "quantitative" and "qualitative" research designs. However, fixed designs need not be quantitative, and flexible design need not be qualitative. In fixed designs, the design of the study is fixed before the main stage of data collection takes place. Fixed designs are normally theory driven; otherwise it is impossible to know in advance which variables need to be controlled and measured. Often, these variables are measured quantitatively. Flexible designs allow for more freedom during the data collection process. One reason for using a flexible research design can be that the variable of interest is not quantitatively measurable, such as culture. In other cases, theory might not be available before one starts the research.

The different types and even more research designs which are going to be discussed here, though can be classified as a part of interventional and non interventional study designs. While performing research, two questions primarily pop up:

1. What is going on (descriptive research)?

2. Why is it going on (explanatory research)?

Before we proceed, we must be clear that research design and methods are different. Failure to distinguish between design and method leads to poor evaluation of the design. Equating cross-sectional designs with questionnaires or case studies with participant observation, means that the designs are often evaluated against the strengths and weaknesses of the method rather than their ability to draw relatively unambiguous conclusions or to select between rival plausible hypotheses.

Date: 2014-12-28; view: 1831