How to design your research project

Start with your research aim(s)
This should be clear, focused and achievable given your timescale and resources. Useful information on how to narrow your focus can be found in Henn, Weinstein and Foard (2006, pp. 50-52).

What are your research questions?
Once you have a clear aim, you can begin to develop your research questions. You need to think about how they relate to existing theory and research and how your research contributes to new knowledge. For example, does it contribute towards new theory, new research methods or both?

Who is your audience and where do you intend to disseminate your research?
Journals, for example, differ in the level of detail required in methodology. It is therefore recommended that you look at the requirements of the journal in which you would like to publish before you design your research.

What is your epistemology?
What are your beliefs about how valid knowledge can be obtained? This will influence your approach to your research. If you are a positivist, for example, (who believes that valid knowledge can be obtained through a scientific approach), you are likely to choose a quantitative research method that begins with a theory and tests that theory. If you favour the social constructivist view that meaning is subjective, gained through interactions with others, you would be more likely to choose qualitative research methods that explores themes. Qualitative research is about generating theory and finding patterns of meaning.

What approach will you choose? Quantitative, qualitative or a mixed methods approach?
This will be influenced by your epistemology (see above). Mixed methods research is relatively new in social science and is more than triangulation: Mixed methods can mean using a mix of different epistemological beliefs, different methods (qualitative and quantitative), different methods of data collection (focus group, survey) and different analysis of data. Authors worth looking at in this field are Creswell and Tashakkori (who currently edit the Journal of Mixed Methods Research) and Onwuegbuzie.

What will your strategy of inquiry be?
Your strategy of inquiry, again, will depend on your epistemological approach. A quantitative strategy could, for example, use experimental designs or non-experimental design such as surveys. A qualitative strategy could use narratives, ethnography, grounded theory or case studies. A mixed methods strategy could use a combination of these strategies at the same time (concurrent) or one after the other (sequential).

How will you collect your data?
The choice of data collection methods are driven by your aim, your epistemology, your strategy of inquiry and what you would like to do with the data. You could use, for example:

• questionnaires
• interviews
• focus groups
• tests (such as personality tests)
• observation
• secondary data (such as censuses, existing survey data).

Bell (1999) and Denscombe (2007) have useful guides on how to carry out many of the above.

How will you choose your sample?
Again, this differs with your method and needs to be considered in your research design.

Have you considered the ethical issues with your research?
These will differ according to your method: ethical issues with quantitative research can be different to those in qualitative research. The aim with a mixed methods approach would be for each approach to compliment each other, to minimise the ethical issues rather than increasing the ethical issues. Find out more about ethics and governance at NTU.

Have you considered the validity (both internal and external) of your research?
Does the data measure what you are claiming that you have measured? How much can you infer that what you have found out can be generalised to other situations? Again, issues of validity and reliability differ between quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research.

How will store and analyse your data?
Both qualitative and quantitative data can be stored manually (for example hand-written interview notes, completed surveys) or electronically (for example Word). Data can also be stored in databases or using data storage systems, some of which can also be used to analyse data. Quantitative data systems include SPSS for storage, analysis and graphing and Excel for storage and graphing. Qualitative data systems include NVivo-7 and Atlas-ti which can be used for storage, coding, and text retrieval. The way you store and analyse your data needs to be carefully recorded to allow for accurate reporting and to enable the research to be repeated if and when necessary.

How will you write up your data?
The research process should be described clearly so that anyone reading the report would be able to replicate the research. The style of writing a research report differs between quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research.

• A quantitative report for example, would start with the hypothesis, the proposed theory, and be about whether the research supports or rejects the hypothesis so would use a more formal reporting style.
• A qualitative report would be looking at meanings and patterns that can be derived from the research, so would be more likely to use the research to generate possible theory from the research and suggest further areas of research.

If you are using mixed methods, the research can be written up sequentially (that is, for example, the focus group results, then the survey results) or it can be integrated into key themes found overall. Useful writing guidelines for research reports can be found in Creswell (2003, pp. 49-69_). A useful differences and examples of how visual displays can be useful in describing the process of research (which are becoming increasingly common in mixed methods research) can be found in Tashakkori and Teddlie (2003, pp. 329-346).