Research Design 101: Research Methods for Students
Which of the many different types of research design is best for you?
One thing that you will want to consider early in your dissertation process is the design of your research study. By the time you start your dissertation or thesis, you have probably taken graduate and undergraduate courses about research methods; however, it has probably been a while since you have taken these courses, and you may need help sorting through all the different types of research design. Below is a brief refresher on different designs and methodologies.
General Types of Research Designs
Descriptive: Researchers use descriptive research designs to describe particular phenomena or Order Xanax Online relationships within a single group sample. Descriptive designs are typically used as either pilot or preliminary studies and generally have rather basic statistical procedures. By nature, Buy Xanax Online descriptive studies do not and cannot be used to explain causation.
Descriptive designs usually provide researchers with information about a group or phenomenon about which there has been little research (e.g., mating patterns of Martians). However, descriptive studies lack randomization and control and cannot be used to determine causation and other implications; in other words, descriptive research designs can only be used to determine “who” and “what,” not “why.”
Quasi-Experimental: Researchers use quasi-experimental research designs to identify differences between two or more groups in an attempt to explain causation. What keeps these types of experiments from being true experiments is lack of randomization. For example, researchers cannot randomly assign gender to participants; therefore, any study in which researchers are investigating differences between genders is inherently quasi-experimental.
