What is a Research Design?

Concept

A research design is the overall framework, or blueprint, that a study adopts in order to answer its research question: it fixes what evidence will be gathered, from whom or what, at what points in time, and by what procedure that evidence will be analysed.

Because it governs every stage of an enquiry rather than one step of it, a design is distinguished from three neighbouring ideas: the theoretical orientation of a study, the research strategy it uses, and the way its completed findings are presented.

Application

Test each offered description by asking what part of the research process it fixes:

• “A way of conducting research that is not grounded in theory” fixes the theoretical orientation — whether explanation is built inductively from data or tested deductively from existing theory.

• “The choice between using qualitative or quantitative methods” fixes the research strategy — the kind of data gathered and the logic of inference applied to it.

• “The style in which you present your research findings e.g. a graph” fixes the presentation of results — the format in which completed analysis is communicated.

• “A framework for every stage of the collection and analysis of data” fixes the structural plan — sampling, measurement, the timing of data collection, and the comparison the study is built to make.

Cross-check

The standard typology of designs — experimental, cross-sectional (survey), longitudinal, case-study and comparative — classifies studies by exactly this structural feature: how and when evidence is collected so that a defensible comparison can be drawn.

Each of those design types can be pursued with qualitative or with quantitative data, can be more or less strongly theorised, and can be written up in any presentational format. Those three properties therefore vary independently of the framework, while the framework is what spans the enquiry from data collection through to analysis.

A research design is therefore a framework for every stage of the collection and analysis of data.