A research design is part of your research plan. In this section, you describe how you will conduct your research, how you will collect and process the data, and how you will analyze it. The research design, therefore, outlines how your research works: from the data collection to the final analysis. This way you have everything clear before you start.
What is a research design?
The research design is a guideline for your research. In it, you describe how you conduct the research that is necessary to answer the research question. For example, are you going to do an experiment, or organize a focus group? What steps do your test subjects go through? How do you take the step from data collection to data analysis? You discuss all of this in the research design.
Your research design (possibly in shortened or modified form) will be included in the method chapter of your thesis. Sometimes it is also a separate assignment, which you have to submit before you start writing your thesis. Your supervisor can give you feedback on this setup before you start your research. If you still need to adjust something, this means you will find out in time.
How do you determine your research design?
Your research method determines what your research design looks like. You can imagine that a study is structured differently if you collect numerical data via a survey distributed to 200 people, than if you observe two people in order to collect in-depth qualitative data. Before you can draw up a research design, you must therefore have a clear idea of what your research question is and which method is appropriate.
It is also important that your research design is well-thought-out . You must be able to justify the choices you have made. In practice, this often means that your research design should be based on previous literature on the subject. Look, for example, at how other scientists have researched the topic of your choice.
Checklist: components of research design
Your research design will contain several components that will help you to find an answer to your main and sub-questions. In any case, the following components should be included in your research design:
● What are you going to research? What questions do you want to answer? Make a connection with the theory from the theoretical framework that you use. For example, it may be that a model emerges from previous literature that you will use for your research.
● Who makes up your research population? Who are you going to conduct the research with, and why did you choose this particular group? Your research population must be representative of the target group. Also, describe how you guarantee representativeness and how you will recruit participants.
● What kind of research are you going to do? Describe whether you conduct qualitative or quantitative research, and which research method you choose. Examples are surveys, interviews, experiments or ethnographic research. Combinations of research methods are also possible.
● Which research instruments do you use? For example, a survey that you distribute online to the target group, a focus group with 10 participants, or an experiment that takes place in a lab. Sometimes you opt to use existing research instruments, such as a test that is used as a standard to measure a certain personal characteristics. Always justify the instrument choices you make.
● Which research design will you choose? For example, are you going for experimental or quasi-experimental research, are you measuring the correlation between variables, or are you doing a case study? You also describe this in your research design.
● How will you collect and analyze the data? You will also discuss the method of data collection and data analysis. For example, describe with which software (SPSS, Excel, etc.) you process the data and which statistical test(s), coding method or other means of analysis you use to analyze the data.
Please note that your thesis supervisor will often specify certain requirements for your research design. Always use it as a guideline for what you do and don't discuss in your draft.
Example research design
After reading this list of parts of your research design, you are probably curious about an example of a research design. Take a look at the databases with thesis examples. Search specifically for a thesis from your field. If you go through the method chapter of that thesis, you can get a good idea of what a research design could look like within your study program.
Another option is to ask your thesis supervisor for a suitable example of a research design.
Need help with your thesis?
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