Develop a research design that is suitable and justifiable to address a particular research question, considering the relative strengths and weaknesses of different research methods

Before conducting any Statistical analysis, it is important to devise a proper research plan and to develop a research design that are relevant and address all the questions in the study. Well, in this blog, I will brief you some points to develop a suitable research methods by keeping in mind their strength and weakness.

A Research design refers to a strategy from which we can study a particular topic of interest in a logical and coherent way. Therefore, developing a research design in any research is the most important step and it constitutes the method of data collection and analysing them with suitable statistical techniques. Type of design can be identified from the research problem we choose, not the other way round!

In social science research, getting or collecting relevant information about the research problem make us to select the suitable statistical test to compare the results and relate that to a theory. However, a common mistake made by most of the researchers is that they will start collecting the information before they develop the research design. Without a proper research plan, we cannot address all the questions in our study. Nowadays, there are many organisations providing statistical services like statistical data analysis for market research, selecting a proper sampling design, method of data collection through questionnaires and surveys, constructing or adopting a relevant sampling design like choosing simple random sampling, stratified sampling, etc, in qualitative and quantitative research, and many others.

In every research design, researchers will be interested in creating or drawing inference with minimum bias. This means, we are interested in reducing the error in any research design. The essentialitems in a research design involve:

Statement of the problem

1. Data collection techniques
2. Statistical method for analyzing data
3. Knowledge on different type of research methodology
4. Proper setup for research
5. Keeping a timeline
6. Measurement of analysis

The following are the important characteristics of research design:

1. Neutrality – Once your study has been set up, you will be making some assumptions about the data to be collect like data should have normality and homogeneous, etc. The findings from the result should project the assumptions and it should be free from bias.
2. Reliability – Reliability we mean is that whatever the results we obtained from a study, it should be expected to get similar results when we conduct the same type of research again. This means, the study should be reliable for future research also.
3. Validity – In statistics, we have different tools to analyse or measuring the data, but identifying which tool is suitable for the study plays a vital role in every research design. The validity of the same should be tested with different methodologies and select the suitable one for a particular research objective.
4. Generalization – In statistics, we usually collect the sample and represent the finding from the sample to the population. Similarly, our research design should reflect the same. That is, it should be a generalized design with greater accuracy.

These characteristics are to be noted and taken care of while conducting any type of research and satisfying all these characteristics make a balanced research design. Apart from this, a researcher should understand the nature of the variables or different kinds of research design. Research designs are broadly classified into two kinds, qualitative research design and quantitative research design. Qualitative research design used to identify the relationships between the variables in the study and quantitative research design provides actionable insights from the statistical analysis. These two research design are further classified into different kinds namely, case-study design, causal design, cross-sectional design, cohort design, descriptive design, exploratory design, experimental design, historical design, longitudinal design, observational design, sequential design and many others. Suppose, for example, if you want to collect the data with repeated measurements, you can adopt a longitudinal design, and if you are interested in empirical study, that is finding a new thing from an experiment, then you can adopt exploratory design, and if you are interested in identifying the effect of some treatment given to the patients or if you want to test the different types of medicines for a particular disease or flu, you can go for cross-sectional designs, etc. Thus, one can adopt a particular design according to their research problem by understanding the merits and demerits of every research design.

Let me end this blog by providing few tips to conduct or devise a good research methodology when you are planning for your dissertation:

In the methods section of your thesis, you should provide every minute details of the research and convince the audience that your methodology is a feasible one and useful for further study. Well, to achieve this goal, that is devising a proper research design and analysis, there are many services out there nowadays. One can adopt the services like approaching the organisations providing help for Quantitative data analysis for dissertation, conducting statistical analysis for qualitative data, services with data collection in both primary and secondary type, data collection through online survey for research,  statistical data analysis services, etc. 

Apart from that, your research methodology should contain adequate literature reviews, and the method adopted for the data collection and findings should be a reliable one from any statistical analysis. The important thing is that it should be clearly focused on the objective of the problem statement and your work should be reproducible. Another important thing is that you have to justify the methods which you adopt in the study by giving valid reason for why you chose a particular method and limitations and drawbacks of other methods suitable for your study. And last thing is that before collecting the data, make a Research data analysis plan by keeping all these in mind and carry out your research. And, check for the validity and reliability of the method adopted for the study. I hope these tips will be helpful for you to devise a proper research design. Good Luck!

References:

• Creswell, John W. and J. David Creswell. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. 5th edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2018.
• De Vaus, D. A. Research Design in Social Research. London: SAGE, 2001; Gorard, Stephen. Research Design: Creating Robust Approaches for the Social Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2013.
• Leedy, Paul D. and Jeanne Ellis Ormrod. Practical Research: Planning and Design. Tenth edition. Boston, MA: Pearson, 2013.
• Vogt, W. Paul, Dianna C. Gardner, and Lynne M. Haeffele. When to Use What Research Design. New York: Guilford, 2012.