How to select a research strategy?

A research design refers to how you go about conducting your research. The choice of a research strategy is largely determined by the type of research question, the available means, and the units of analysis. Most introductory text books (including the one written by Earl Babbie, which is used at this faculty) do not distinguish clearly between research designs and data collection methods.

Research designs that can be used to explain things can be broadly categorised as either (quasi-)experimental, and as non-experimental. Within these two broad categories there are several sub-categories, depending on factors such as the number of groups analysed, the number of times each case is observed, and the number of cases.

(Quasi-)Experimental designs

Experimental designs refer to the broad category of research designs that involves at least two groups, administering a treatment and observing the consequences. Within this category, various sub-categories exist, depending on:

Experiments (preferably using random assignment) are generally the best way to make valid causal inferences; however, many research questions are not amenable to experiments and the external validity of experiments is disputed.

Non-experimental designs

Non-experimental designs involve making observations with a single group. Within this category, various sub-categories exist, depending on:

Quantitative, non-experimental designs can be used to make accurate descriptive inferences about a population. This means they are strong at external validity. As ‘correlational designs’ they are also used to tackle explanatory questions. Qualitative research is the best approach to gaining insights into a topic with a view to developing hypotheses (exploratory research). Qualitative designs are also used to provide tentative tests of hypotheses on research questions that cannot be answered using experiments or quantitative non-experimental designs. The external validity of qualitative designs, however, is disputed. An extensive overview of qualitative designs can be found here.

Readings

Basic readings

Additional readings