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The design of a study defines the study type (descriptive, correlational, semi-experimental, experimental, review, meta-analytic) and sub-type (e.g.: descriptive-longitudinal case study), research question and hypotheses, independent and dependent variables, experimental design if applicable, data collection methods and a statistical analysis plan.
Descriptive (e.g.: case-study, naturalistic observation, survey) Correlational (e.g.: case-control study, observational study) Semi-experimental (e.g.: field experiment, quasi-experiment) Experimental (Experiment with random assignment) Review (Literature review, Systematic review) Meta-analytic (Meta-analysis)
Sometimes a distinction is made between fixed and flexible or, synonymously, quantitative and qualitative research designs.[1] However, fixed designs need not be quantitative, and flexible design need not be qualitative. In fixed designs, the design of the study is fixed before the main stage of data collection takes place. Fixed designs are normally theory driven; otherwise its impossible to know in advance which variables need to be controlled and measured. Often, these variables are measured quantitatively. Flexible designs allow for more freedom during the data collection process. One reason for using a flexible research design can be that the variable of interest is not quantitatively measurable, such as culture. In other cases, theory might not be available before one starts the research.
Grouping
The choice of how to group participants depends on the research hypothesis and on how the participants are sampled. In a typical experimental study, there will be at least one experimental condition (e.g.: treatment) and one control condition (no treatment), but the appropriate method of grouping may be depend on factors such as the duration of measurement phase and participant characteristics:
research is that the result is more meaningful, in a sense that it is much harder to claim that a certain result is statistically significant. The reason for this is that in confirmatory research, one ideally strives to reduce the probability of falsely reporting a non-significant result as significant. This probability is known as -level or type I error. Loosely speaking, if you know what you are looking for, you shou==Examples of fixed designs== In an experimental design, the researcher actively tries to change the situation, circumstances, or experience of participants (manipulation), which may lead to a change in behavior or outcomes for the participants of the study. The researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions, measures the variables of interest and tries to control for confounding variables. Therefore, experiments are often highly fixed even before the data collection starts. In a good experimental design, a few things are of great importance. First of all, it is necessary to think of the best way to operationalize the variables that will be measured. Therefore, it is important to consider how the variable(s) will be measured, as well as which methods would be most appropriate to answer the research question. In addition, the statistical analysis has to be taken into account. Thus, the researcher should consider what the expectations of the study are as well as how to analyse this outcome. Finally, in an experimental design the researcher must think of the practical limitations including the availability of participants as well as how representative the participants are to the target population. It is important to consider each of these factors before beginning the experiment.[2] Additionally, many researchers employ power analysis before they conduct an experiment, in order to determine how large the sample must be to find an effect of a given size with a given design at the desired probability of making a Type I or Type II error. To read more about experimental research designs, See Experiment.
possible to have an idea about a relation between variables but to lack knowledge of the direction and strength of the relation. If the researcher does not have any specific hypotheses beforehand, the study is exploratory with respect to the variables in question (although it might be confirmatory for others). The advantage of exploratory research is that it is easier make new discoveries due to the less stringent methodological restrictions. Here, the researcher does not want to miss a potentially interesting relation and therefore aims to minimize the probability of rejecting a real effect or relation, this probability is sometimes referred to as and the associated error is of type II. In other words, if you want to see whether some of your measured variables could be related, you would want to increase your chances of finding a significant result by lowering the threshold of what you deem to be significant. Sometimes, a researcher may conduct exploratory research but report it as if it had been confirmatory (HARKing); this is a questionable research practice bordering fraud.
(See correlation and dependence). The second type is comparative research. These designs compare two or more groups on one or more variable, such as the effect of gender on grades. The third type of non-experimental research is a longitudinal design. A longitudinal design examines variables such as performance exhibited by a group or groups over time. See Longitudinal study.
Ethnographic study
This type of research is involved with a group, organization, culture, or community. Normally the researcher shares a lot of time with the group.