Chapter 5: Creating a Research Design

Design and the purpose of the research

Your research design is your plan for providing a sound, and, if possible, conclusive answer to your research question. Designs vary greatly, depending on the research question being addressed and the methods of data collection the investigator chooses to use. Creating a design starts with the purpose of the research.

Most research is done for one of three purposes. The most common purpose is to describe some set of variables or relationships among them as accurately as possible. Other purposes of research are to explore a topic to learn more about it or to explain why certain social patterns or relationships occur as they do. Some studies combine more than one purpose. For example, while the Sudan Fertility Study was designed primarily as a descriptive investigation, we showed how data from this study were analyzed to explain why future fertility rates may decline in northern Sudan. Nevertheless, we will describe each approach separately to show how each purpose affects design decisions. Exploratory research generally requires less rigorous design decisions; so we will start with it.

Exploratory research

Exploratory research, as the name suggests, is a way of gaining some initial information about a problem or topic. You may be interested in a certain problem, but don't have enough information to write a clear research question. Perhaps you are not sure what the critical variables are or what methods of data collection may work best. Before beginning an investigation, you might decide to explore the problem by doing some informal interviews or by living for a short time with the group you want to study. These techniques are often used in exploratory research.

Example. Julia and Ridha (2001) explored experiences of Kuwaiti women during the Iraqi invasion and following occupation of Kuwait in 1990. Twenty women who played various roles, including active opposition to the Iraqi invaders, told of their experiences before, during, and after the invasion. The women reported that they actively sought their own self-development and liberation, but once the conflict ended, their choices and rights tended to become restricted again by traditional male prerogatives.

Exploratory studies, however, seldom provide satisfactory answers to research questions. One reason is that most exploratory studies are based on samples too small to permit generalizing the results to a larger population. This is certainly true of the study of Kuwaiti women. But exploratory studies can provide valuable, even critical, information for designing larger scale descriptive or explanatory studies.

Descriptive research

Descriptive research is more specific and focused than exploratory research. The researcher starts with a well defined problem or research question and a clearly defined plan for collecting and analyzing data. Descriptive research is intended to produce clear, well-founded answers to some question or specific, factual information. Surveys are frequently used in descriptive research.

Example. Fattah (1981) conducted interviews, using a questionnaire, with 200 randomly selected farm families in Iraq. The questionnaire contained over 200 items about husband-wife decision-making related to the operation of the farm, financial matters, social life, entertainment, training of children, and childcare. She also obtained information on whether the families had a "modern" or "traditional" view of things. These data provided a detailed description of the degree to which wives participated in decision-making with their husbands. Fattah concluded that factors associated with modernism will continue to increase and will enhance the position of women in rural Iraq, which, today, remains male dominated.