# Welcome to SMIRK Unit
8 - Research design

- What is research design?
- Research methods
- Quantitative research and surveys
- Qualitative research, interviews and focus groups
- Participatory and experimental research
- Experimental design examples
- Longitudinal
- Longitudinal and cross-sectional
- Recap
- Measurement
- Planning your research
- Key questions
- Getting the answer
- Back to main index

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

# What is research
design?

We ask questions all the time. Research is a formal way of going about asking questions. It uses methodologies (formal frameworks for collecting and analysing data). After you have decided what your research questions or your hypothesis are, you start designing your research. This means you plan your research. Much about this plan is determined by your research questions or your hypothesis.

What philosophical stance do you take to your research?
For example, do you think the best way to answer your research questions or prove your hypothesis is to set up experiments? That would be a positivist stance. Or do you want to explore how human behaviour impacts on public health? That would be an interpretivist stance. Have a look at the information on educational research the Open Lean web site from the Open University for more information.

How do we choose a research design?
Methodology is the actual approach on how you go about answering your research questions (proving your hypothesis). A methodology can contain various research methods (tools with which you gather your data: questionnaires, experiments, interviews). Caution! You will find the literature sometimes treats the terms methods and methodology as the same, which is not correct. However, sometimes authors disagree if something is a method or a methodology, in this case there is no right or wrong. Your task is to justify your decision.

Some authors treat a case study as research method (the actual tool to gather data) while others tread it as a methodology (the approach on how to go about researching an issue and use), for example, interviews and focus groups as methods within the methodology ‘Case Study’.

It depends on whether we want to:

- describe what is happening
- examine why it is happening (expressing causal connections)
- be able to generalise to a wider population
- examine these behaviours over time

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

# Research methods

The most significant difference is made between quantitative and qualitative research methods. Quantitative methods are usually related to numbers, surveys, experiments, statistics and positivist research philosophy. Qualitative methods, interviews and observations, - are usually related to interpretivist research philosophy.

However, your methodology could benefit from including qualitative and quantitative methods. This depends on the aims and objectives for your research project. What do you want to find our or prove? What is the best way to answer your questions or prove your hypothesis? This section of SMIRK gives general information about research methods, to get specific advice relevent to your subject, contact your Learning Development Centre.

#### Here are the basic research methods and designs:

- Quantitative research (for example, a survey)
- Qualitative research (such as face-to-face interviews, focus groups or site visits)
- Case studies
- Participatory research
- Experimental
- Cross-sectional
- Longitudinal

These are not mutually exclusive – you can use more than one. For example, a cross-sectional and case study, such as semi-structured interviews with households but within a particular neighbourhood. You could also use a case study and longitudinal study, such as in-depth research with a community over months or years. In this section we will also look at measurement and some general issues to consider when planning your project.

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

# Quantitative research
and surveys

- Involves information or data in the form of numbers
- Allows us to measure or to quantify things
- Respondents don’t necessarily give numbers as answers - answers are analysed as numbers
- A good example of quantitative research is the survey.

What is survey research?
Many research projects and dissertations need the collection of primary data from individuals. Questionnaires are often a good way to gather such information and views. However, a badly designed questionnaire may get only unusable responses or none at all. It is important to be able to identify and avoid any pitfalls of questionnaires to ensure a successful result.

What do you want to know?
Before you even write the first question, it is important that you have a very clear idea about what you want your questionnaire to achieve. Our section on defining a research questio n should help you with this. Write down your research goals, and think about what information you need to get from respondents to meet them. Think also about how you are going to analyse each question to get the results you need. Remember there is a difference between things you need to know, and those it would be nice to know. Eliminate unnecessary lines of questioning at the planning stage.

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

# Qualitative research,
interviews, focus
groups and case studies

- Helps us flesh out the story and develop a deeper understanding of a topic
- Often contrasted to quantitative research
- Together they give us the ‘bigger picture’
- Good examples of qualitative research are face-to-face interviews, focus groups and site visits

#### Face-to-face interviews

- You must prepare your questions in advance.
- It is a good idea to record your interviews
- Interviews take up time, so plan for an hour or less (roughly 10 questions)
- Stick to your questions, but be flexible if relevant or interesting issues arise during the interview

#### Focus groups

- These take time to arrange, so prepare in advance (use an intermediary to help you if you can)
- Who will be in your focus group? (think about age, gender)
- Size of focus group (8-10 is typical)
- Consider whether or not to have separate focus groups for different ages or genders (for example when discussing sex and sexuality)

#### Case studies

- These give a method of capturing and presenting concrete details of real or fictional situations in a structured way
- They are good for comparative analysis
- They are a detailed examination of a single case rather than quantifying and understanding relationships between variables during two or more collection points.
- Cases can be individuals, businesses, organisations, events or geographical areas
- They are often thought of as a qualitative design but can be used when looking to quantitatively describe what is going on.
- They are useful when there is little known or understood about the topic

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

# Participatory and
experimental research

#### Participatory research

- This allows participation of community being researched in research process (for example, in developing research question, choosing methodology, and analysing results)
- It is a good way to ensure that the research does not simply reinforce prejudices and presumptions of the researcher
- It is good for raising awareness in community and developing appropriate action plans

#### Experimental research

- It is associated with the natural sciences
- It is regarded as the gold standard
- It allows the establishment of cause and effect
- What about experimental design and social research?
  - It is difficult to manipulate the variables of interest, for example, a socio-economic group
- There are ethical issues

#### Classic experimental design

- Researchers randomly allocate subject to either an experimental or control group
- Pre-test both
- An experiment performed on the experimental group
- Post-test on both

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

# Experimental design
examples

#### Two groups

Experiment group | Pre-test observation | Experiment | Post-test observation
Control group | Pre-test observation | No experiment | Post-test observation

Analysis: Compare Pre-test and post-test results.

Temperature |  | Change in the state of a liquid
Independent variable (x) |  | Dependent variable

Quasi-experimental research
These are similar to experiments but without random assignment to the groups. There is a lack of internal validity – how can we be sure that x caused y if there was some engineering of the groups?

There are two main types:

- non-equivalent control group
- before-and-after

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

# Longitudinal

- Collects data on the same subjects over time
- Two or more collection points
- Data from each collection point is compared
- Useful for understanding social change

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

# Longitudinal and
cross-sectional research

#### Panel studies: data from samples at 2 or more points in time, for example,

- British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) – objective is to further understanding of social and economic change at the individual sample of more than 5,000 households in Britain with the same individuals re-interviewed in successive waves.

#### Cohort studies: returning to a sample of participants who are part of the same cohort, for example,

- Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) – follows the lives of a sample of 19,000 babies born between 1 September 2000 and 31 August 2001 in England and Wales, and between 22 November 2000 and 11 January 2002 in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

#### Cross-sectional research

- This is the most recognisable research design in social research.
- Information is collected across more than one case at one point in time.
- The classic ‘social survey’ design.
- Do not confuse cross-sectional with a ‘survey’ used to describe a method of collecting data. Cross-sectional can use many other methods to collect data, such as structured observation or official statistics.
- The aim is to collect information on variables to find out about the relationships between those variables.

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

# Recap

- There are four main research designs :
  - Experimental
  - Cross-sectional
  - Longitudinal
  - Case study
- These are not mutually exclusive – you can use more than one.
  - cross-sectional and case study, such as semi-structured interviews with households but within a particular neighbourhood.
  - case study and longitudinal, such as in-depth research with a community over months or years.
- Now let's go on and look at types of measurement.

If you would like to look at this topic in more detail, look at Strathclyde University's excellent flowchart on research problems.

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

# Measurement

- The nominal scale of measurement. Nominal data, such as the gender of an individual, cannot be ranked.
  - All we can do with nominal data is to say whether an individual belongs to one group or another; for instnace, is male or female
- The ordinal scale can be ranked. An example of ordinal data are the educational qualifications of individuals.
  - We can say that an individual who completed high school has a higher educational qualification than one who has not.
- Much clearer about the relative distance between objects is data which is on the interval scale of measurement.
  - For instance, we can say that 40 degrees, the summer temperature in Los Angeles, is 28 degrees centigrade higher that the average summer temperature in Glasgow, which is said to be 12 degrees centigrade. However, it is again impossible to say that Los Angeles is twice as hot as Glasgow
- The last type of data concern the ratio measurement scale.
  - Data belonging to the ratio scale, such as data on individual income allows us to express relationships in multiples.
  - So, a businessman who earns £84,000 will earn twice as much as most UK University lecturers who earn, on average £39,500.
  - Expressing this relationship is possible because income does have a non-arbitrary zero point as you cannot earn an income of less than zero pounds
- Validity describes the extent to which an instrument actually measures what is it supposed to measure.
  - If a researcher distributed a survey investigating the extent of poverty only in a very rich neighborhood, her research would be less valid than if she had attempted to distribute her survey across the whole city.
- Reliability concerns the degree to which a measurement yields a consistent result.
  - For instance, if our poverty survey were distributed only among the residents of a student dormitory, who stay in this location for less than 2 years, it would be less reliable than if it had been distributed among long term residents.

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

# Planning your research

#### Key questions

- What do you want to know?
- How do you find out what you want to know?
- Where can you get the information?
- Who do you need to ask?
- When does your research need to be done?
- Why? (Getting the answer)

#### Step 1: What?

- What do I want to know?
- When developing your research question, keep in mind:
  - Who your research is for;
  - What decisions your research will inform;
  - What kind of information is needed to inform those decisions.
- Conduct a local information scan
- Take another look at your research question

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

# Key questions

#### Step 2: How? Where? Who?

- How do I find out what I want to know?
- Where can I get the information I need?
- Who do I need to ask? (not just your tutor, but don't forget your subject librarian - they can help!)
- Choose your methodology
- quantitative or numbers information
- qualitative in-depth explanatory information
- case studies
- site visits or observation
- participatory research

#### Step 3: When?

- When do all the different parts of the research need to be done?
- List all your research work areas
- Map them against a timeline
- Develop a work plan

Our section on writing a research proposal will help you with this and other issues associated with research.

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

# Getting the answer

#### Step 4: Why?

- Collect your data
- Keep returning to your research question
- Organize your research results to answer the question
- Keep in mind who you are doing the research for
- Focus on what research results tell you
- Be creative, methodical and meticulous
- Read our unit on Writing skills
- Remember that help is available from the Learning Development Centres

Good luck!

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SMIRK - Research design by Learning from WOeRk, University of Plymouth modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License