What is the difference between Research Design and Research Method?

Research design is a plan to answer your research question. A research method is a strategy used to
implement that plan. Research design and methods are different but closely related, because good research
design ensures that the data you obtain will help you answer your research question more effectively.

Which research method should I choose?

It depends on your research goal. It depends on what subjects (and who) you want to study. Let's say you
are interested in studying what makes people happy, or why some students are more conscious about
recycling on campus. To answer these questions, you need to make a decision about how to collect your
data. Most frequently used methods include:

1. Observation / Participant Observation

2. Surveys
3. Interviews
4. Focus Groups
5. Experiments
6. Secondary Data Analysis / Archival Study
7. Mixed Methods (combination of some of the above)

One particular method could be better suited to your research goal than others, because the data you collect
from different methods will be different in quality and quantity. For instance, surveys are usually designed
to produce relatively short answers, rather than the extensive responses expected in qualitative interviews.

What other factors should I consider when choosing one method over another?

Time for data collection and analysis is something you want to consider. An observation or interview
method, so-called qualitative approach, helps you collect richer information, but it takes time. Using a
survey helps you collect more data quickly, yet it may lack details. So, you will need to consider the time
you have for research and the balance between strengths and weaknesses associated with each method (e.g.,
qualitative vs. quantitative).
Economic Development during the Civil War and Reconstruction

The United States, on the verge of civil war, contained two distinct economies. While the majority of Americans
in every part of the country lived and worked on farms, their economic lives differed fundamentally from each
other. In the South, life revolved around unfree labor and staple crops. The North contained a greater diversity
of industry, finance, and commerce resting on the “free labor” of wage earners and small proprietors. The war
years would alter this picture, leaving the South in shambles and clearing the way for the continued growth of
the northern economy. In 1859 and 1860, southern planters were flush with prosperity after producing record
cotton crops–America’s most valuable export at the time. Southern prosperity relied on over 4 million African
American slaves to grow cotton, along with a number of other staple crops across the region. Cotton fed the
textile mills of America and Europe and brought great wealth to the region. On the eve of war, the American
South enjoyed more per capita wealth than any other slave economy in the New Word. To their masters, slaves
constituted their most valuable assets, worth roughly three billon dollars. Yet this wealth obscured the gains in
infrastructure, industrial production, and financial markets occurring north of the Mason-Dixon line, a fact that
the war would unmask for all to see.

In contrast to the slave South, northerners praised their region as a land of free labor, populated by farmers,
merchants, and wage-laborers. It was also home to a robust market economy. By 1860, northerners could buy
clothing made in a New-England factory, or light their homes with kerosene oil from Pennsylvania. The
Midwest produced seas of grain that fed the country, with enough left over for export to Europe. Farther west,
mining and agriculture were the mainstays of life. Along with the textile mills, shoe factories and iron foundries,
firms like the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, or the Colt Company displayed the technical
advances of northern manufacturers. These goods crisscrossed the country on the North’s growing railroad
network. Underlying production was an extensive network of banks and financial markets that helped aggregate
capital that could be reinvested into further growth.
The Civil War, like all wars, interrupted the rhythms of commercial life by destroying lives and property. This
was especially true in the Confederacy. From 1861 onwards, the Confederate government struggled to find the
guns, food, and supplies needed to field an army. Southerners did make astonishing gains in industrial
production during this time, but it was never enough. The Union’s blockade of the Atlantic prevented the
Confederacy from financing the war with cotton sales to Europe. To pay their troops and keep the economy
alive, the Confederate Congress turned to printing paper money–which quickly sank in value and lead to rapid
inflation. In many cases, Confederate officials dispensed with taxes paid in cash and simply impressed the food
and materials needed from their citizens. Perhaps most striking of all, in the vast agricultural wealth of the
South, many southerners struggled to find enough to eat.

The war also pushed the US government to take unprecedented steps. Congress raised tariffs, and passed the
first national income tax in 1862. After the suspension of specie payments in late 1861, Congress created the
US’s first fiat currency called “greenbacks.” At first, the expansion of the currency and the rapid rise in
government spending translated into an uptick in business in 1862-1863. As the war dragged on, inflation also
hit the North. Workers demanded higher wages to pay rents and buy necessities, while the business community
groaned under their growing tax burden. The United States, however, never embarked on a policy of
impressment for food and supplies. The factories and farms of the North successfully supplied Union troops,
while the federal government, with some adjustments, found the means to pay for war. None of this is to suggest
that the North’s superior ability to supply its war machine made the outcome of the war inevitable. Any account
of how the war progressed must take account of the tangled web of politics, battles, and economics that occurred
between 1861 and 1865.The aftermath of the war left portions of the Confederacy in ruins, and with little or no
money to rebuild. State governments were mired in debt, and white planters, who had most of their capital tied
up in slaves, lost most of their wealth. Cotton remained the most significant crop, but the war changed how it
was grown and sold. Planters broke up large farms into smaller plots tended to by single families in exchange
for a portion of the crop, called sharecropping. Once cotton production resumed, Americans found that their
cotton now competed with new cotton plantations around the world.

War brought destruction across the South. Governmental and private buildings, communication systems, the economy, and transportation
infrastructure were all debilitated. “[Richmond, Va. Crippled locomotive, Richmond & Petersburg Railroad depot],” c. 1865. Library of
Congress.

Emancipation was the single most important economic, social and political outcome of the war. Freedom
empowered African Americans in the South to rebuild families, make contracts, hold property and move freely
for the first time. During Reconstruction, Republican policy in the South attempted to transform the region into
a free-labor economy like the North. Yet the transition from slave labor to free labor was never so clear. Well
into the 20th century, white southerners used a combination of legal force and extra-legal violence to keep a
degree of control of over African American labor. Peonage and vagrancy laws attempted to keep African
Americans bound to their white employers. In the later nineteenth-century, poor whites would form mobs and
go “white-capping” to scare away blacks from jobs. Lacking the means to buy their own farms, black famers
often turned to sharecropping. Sharecropping often led to cycles of debt that kept families bound to the land. For
the South as a whole, the war and Reconstruction marked the start of a period of deep poverty that would last
until at least the New Deal of the 1930s.Victory did not translate into a quick economic boom for the United
States. The North would not regain its prewar pace of industrial and commodity output until the 1870s. The war
did prove beneficial to northern farmers, who responded to wartime labor shortages with greater use of
mechanical reapers, which boosted yields. The most significant change for the North was the increased presence
of the federal government in the economy. Republican Congresses during the Civil War passed a series of laws
that restructured the relationship between the government and the market and set the stage for the Gilded Age.
New tariff laws sheltered northern industry from European competition. The Morrill Land Grant helped create
colleges such as the University of California, Illinois, and Wisconsin. With the creation of the National Banking
System and the greenbacks, Congress replaced hundreds of state bank notes with a system of federal currency
that accelerated trade and exchange between regions of the country. This was not to say that Republican policy
worked perfectly. The Homestead Act, meant to open the West to small farmers was often frustrated by the
actions of Railroad corporations and speculators. The Transcontinental Railroad, also created during the war,
failed to produce any economic gains until decades after its creation. The war years also forged a close
relationship between government and the business elite, a relationship that sometimes resulted in corruption and
catastrophe as it did when markets crashed on Black Friday September 24, 1869. This new relationship created a
political backlash, especially in the West and South against Washington’s perceived eastern and industrial bias.
In other words, the end of the slavery issue during the Civil War gave way to long political conflict over the
direction of American economic development that would mark politics for the rest of the century.
 Introduction

The most difficult task confronting many Southerners during Reconstruction was devising a new system of labor
to replace the shattered world of slavery. The economic lives of planters, former slaves, and nonslaveholding
whites, were transformed after the Civil War.

Planters found it hard to adjust to the end of slavery. Accustomed to absolute control over their labor force,
many sought to restore the old discipline, only to meet determined opposition from the freedpeople, who
equated freedom with economic autonomy.

Many former slaves believed that their years of unrequited labor gave them a claim to land; "forty acres and a
mule" became their rallying cry. White reluctance to sell to blacks, and the federal government's decision not to
redistribute land in the South, meant that only a small percentage of the freedpeople became landowners. Most
rented land or worked for wages on white-owned plantations.

During Reconstruction, many small white farmers, thrown into poverty by the war, entered into cotton
production, a major change from prewar days when they concentrated on growing food for their own families.

Out of the conflicts on the plantations, new systems of labor slowly emerged to take the place of slavery.
Sharecropping dominated the cotton and tobacco South, while wage labor was the rule on sugar plantations.

Increasingly, both white and black farmers came to depend on local merchants for credit. A cycle of debt often
ensued, and year by year the promise of economic independence faded.
The Post-Cold War Era

Implications for Educators

Maurice A. East

Following the end of the Cold War, international relations experts are looking at the world in new ways. No
consensus has yet emerged on
how to describe and analyze the current era of international relations. Is the world today multicentric? Unipolar?
Hegemonic?

Part of the confusion results from the difficulty in characterizing the role of the United States. Some analysts
point to the fact that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the other superpower in the Cold War, the U.S. is
now the sole surviving superpower in the world. Others note the degree to which the U.S. is less dominant today
than it was earlier. Although these two perspectives are not necessarily incompatible, they do capture the
prevailing sense of ambiguity. Even the term most often used to refer to this periodóthe Post-Cold War eraóis
past-oriented and says nothing about the present or future.

In addition to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, two major historical processes
whose eventual consequences are still unclear have affected virtually every region of the globe. They are:

1. The continued rapid growth of international economic interdependence, and

2. The global information and technology revolution, which has resulted in a worldwide reach by broadcast
media and the ability to move information of all sorts around the world at lightning speeds.

Compounding the problem of describing the current international system is the fact that, in many areas of the
world, the post-Cold War era has brought about a decreasing interest in things international at the very time
when life in the waning days of the twentieth century is internationalizing faster than ever before. There is a
widespread sense that it is now time to devote much more attention to other issues, often very domestic and
local. For countries to become more inwardly focused at a time when they are more affected by the outside
world than ever will certainly influence the direction taken by the international system.

I suggest that the post-Cold War world has three main characteristics:1

1. Great Uncertainty: The Cold War provided a structure and predictability in international affairs that is no
longer present.

2. Even Greater Complexity: As the Cold War structure disintegrated, an interdependent world became more
complicated. As the Cold War alliance system collapsed, questions arose of inclusion and exclusion,
organizations and coalitions sought new missions, new international actors emerged, and new conflicts and
issues (often long dormant) appeared on the international agenda.

3. Greater Diffuseness of Power and

Control: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has re-examined its international commitments. Other
international centers of power and influence have grown and become more significant, e.g., the European Union
and the Asia-Pacific. Regional issues are becoming much more important for many nations, replacing the
pervasive East-West global issues of the previous era. Nations large and small are now faced with taking more
responsibility for dealing with and managing issues and potential conflicts in their neighborhood.

International Issues in the Post-Cold War Era

Given this post-Cold War context, what are some of the changes in international relations that need to be
reflected in the K-12 curriculum?

1. Studying Cooperation in Addition to Conflict. A key change in the post-Cold War study of international
relations is a greater emphasis on understanding cooperation between nations. Despite the unfortunate tendency
of the media and individuals alike to focus on conflict and the use of force, the overwhelming proportion of
international activity is non-violent.

ìCooperation under anarchy,î the title of an important book, is a concept that captures this change very well. 2 As
the Cold War waned, scholars became more interested in explaining cooperation and examining why there is not
more violent conflict in international relations. The anarchic self-help nature of the international system has
been accepted by scholars with very different orientationsórealists and liberal institutionalists alike.

With this in mind, it may be useful to reconsider standard history curricula and texts to determine whether
ìcooperation under anarchyî is adequately represented there. Might not more emphasis be placed on the
diplomacy, negotiation, and international institutions that make conflict less likely at the expense of some study
of the details of prosecuting the major wars?

2. The Increased Importance of International Economic Issues. As noted above, the increasing role played by
economic issues in international affairs preceded the post-Cold War era. In fact, it is common to hear non-U.S.
scholars comment that it was only in the United States that international economics was not traditionally
recognized as a core aspect of post-war foreign policy. One reason often cited for this is the economic
dominance of the U.S. at the end of World War II. However, the pace of international economic
interdependence has quickened, and the ending of the Cold War means that ideological and security-based
international issues have decreased in salience, while international economic issues have gained in importance.
(In the academic world, one indicator of this is that the subfield of International Political Economy has been the
most popular and fastest growing subfield in international studies.)

The deepening (and widening) of economic integration in Europe; the evolving international political economy
of the Asia-Pacific; the transformation in literally all regions of formerly centralized economies; the completion
of the GATT Uruguay round; and the formation of the World Trade Organization and the North American Free
Trade Area are just a few of the issues that have dominated the post-Cold War period.

Given the secondary position of economics in the K-12 social studies curriculum and in the training and
background of most social studies educators, it would be fair to assume that many of these international
economic issues are not well covered in the current curriculum. These issues deserve somewhat more
prominence, which may require some educators to retool their knowledge of economics and international
political economy.

3. International Organization as a Key Concern. The increased concern with how nations and other
international actors organize themselves to cooperate in an anarchic, self-help system is a major concern of
contemporary international relations scholarship. It is not coincidental that the most prominent academic journal
of the post-Cold War period is International Organizationówith no ìs.î A large proportion of post-Cold War
research focuses on the level, type, and degree of organization found in international relations. Earlier, there was
more emphasis on various types of organizations (the UN, OAS), non-governmental organizations (such as
Greenpeace or the International Red Cross), multinational corporations (e.g., IBM, Unilever), and alliances
(NATO).

Now the focus is less on the institutions and entities and more on what are called international regimes, 3 that is,
the arrangements between and among the entities and their patterns of interaction. The use of this concept to
describe current international relations has become increasingly important in the discussion of international
organization in the post-Cold War period. The typical pattern of international behavior is neither unstructured
anarchy nor UN behavior. The examination of the different patterns of international regimes is one approach to
understanding the diversity of international activity ranging between these two polar opposites. Krasner notes:
ìIt is the infusion of behavior with principles and norms that distinguishes regime-governed activity in the
international system from more conventional activity, guided by narrow calculations of interest.î 4
Another concept that focuses on the organization of international affairs is multilateralism. The focus here is on
nations and other international entities acting collectively.5 The idea of multilateral action has come to the
forefront of the study of international relations in the post-Cold War era because of two events. One was
Mikhail Gorbachevís decision to shift the Soviet Unionís policy towards the UN in the mid-1980s. In a speech
at Vladivostok, he emphasized the value of multilateral actions and the UN, especially in dealing with
international problems. He highlighted and to some extent validated the idea that world problems could no
longer be dealt with effectively by nations acting solely unilaterally. The other event was the Persian Gulf War,
in which President Bush sought to conduct the operation as a multilateral undertaking with the attendant
international legitimacy created by doing so.

The Clinton Administration began its first term by putting heavy emphasis on multilateralism as a key part of
U.S. foreign policy (led by then UN Ambassador Albright). However, unfortunate developments in Somalia and
then Haiti quickly revealed the limits of multilateralism, and a more balanced perspective emerged. But a key
issue in the post-Cold War period is how and when to use multilateral and collective actions to manage
international affairs. Peacekeeping operations, which have become so frequent and prominent in the post-Cold
War period, raise all the delicate issues inherent in multilateralism, whether they are UN-sponsored, NATO-
sponsored, or ad hoc arrangements by regional powers and organizations.

Individual Rights and Democratic Values

A key feature of post-Cold War international relations is its increased concern with issues that affect individual
rights and democratic freedom.

Many of the substantive issues of the post-Cold War period focus on international well-being at the individual
level. Issues of migration and refugees are of increasing concern, in part because of the movements of large
masses of peoples as a consequence of the ethnic-based violence and civil strife that has occurred as the Cold
War suppression of regional conflicts dissipated. Human rights issues appear more prominent today, partly as a
result of the increased attention being paid to them as Cold War issues subside. And advances in international
media coverage bring human rights abuses and the consequences of ethnic strife and natural disasters into our
homes and schools instantaneously. The transforming of former centralized economies toward more free market
systems also is driven by efforts to increase the economic autonomy of the individual.

All of these forces are operating to increase the ability of individuals to be involved in and influence
international relations and foreign policy without the mediating influence of the nation-state. This is part of the
reason James Rosenau, in a very influential book, refers to the ìturbulenceî in international relations today. 6

The increased interest in human rights has resulted in a scholarly reaction against traditional realist perspectives
that assert that individual values play little role in the analysis of international relations, since all actors are
presumed to engage in the pursuit of power and national interests. As the Cold War waned, there were more and
more instances of behavior that could not be explained from this perspective. Concerns for human rights and
environmental policies cannot be explained using only realist assumptions. Researchers today are more
frequently examining the sources of these concerns in terms of the ideas and values that drive them.7

Another focus is on the relationship between democracy and foreign policy. Activities on behalf of human rights
are strongly centered in democratic countries. There is good evidence that democratic states do not tend to wage
war with other democratic states.8 The promotion of human rights and democratic values is a trend whose future
success is difficult to estimate, but which current reviews of international relations cannot ignore.

Changing Concepts of International Security

During the post-Cold War period, a number of successful international initiatives have reflected some new
directions in international security:

n A major multilateral military operation was successfully undertaken to meet direct military aggression by Iraq
against Kuwait in the Persian Gulf
n The Non Proliferation Treaty was renewed indefinitely, and the non-proliferation regime was strengthened by
strong international actions against Iraq and North Korea

n The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the norm underlying it were accepted by virtually the entire
international community

n Major efforts were successful in avoiding nuclear accidents or proliferation after the dissolution of the Soviet
Union

Much, however, remains to be done, foremost being the finalization of several nuclear reduction and limitation
treaties between the U.S. and Russia. The new shape of international security will be influenced by the outcome
of initiatives to enlarge NATO and the success or failure of peace-keeping operations such as those in Bosnia.

Final Thoughts for Educators

What do these changes in the study of international relations mean for educators? Are there implications that can
be noted for our school curriculum?

First, with the passing of the Cold War, the models and ideas that ìworkedî before may well need rethinking.
There is certainly continuity with the pastóthe basic anarchic self-help international political system still exists.
But its characteristics have changed. Traditional realist power political considerations have not disappeared, but
they are unable to explain as much of international relations today. Now more than ever, one needs to utilize
multiple perspectives in understanding post-Cold War international relations and foreign policy.

Second, the greater complexity of international issues today means that it is more important than ever to analyze
various sides of an issue. Most post-Cold War issues cannot be cast in the good/bad terms of the Cold War. This
in turn can lead to more controversy in the classroom. Discussing NAFTA or U.S. policy toward China will
almost certainly touch on very sensitive political points of view. But a responsible discussion of these issues
cannot avoid the inherent controversy.

Third, much of the study of post-Cold War international relations needs to focus on the changing role of the
U.S. in the world, which means a future-oriented perspective. This provides many issues that can be effectively
dealt with in the classroom: Is the U.S. a hegemonic or declining power? Should the U.S. be more or less
involved in world affairs? What level of military security is needed over the next decade?

Finally, thanks to continuing globalization, it is easier than ever before to assure that teaching about
international relations today need not be narrowly focused on the U.S., nor does it have to reflect such a strong
U.S. perspective or bias. Thanks to todayís technology, it is possible to get considerable ìreal-timeî media
coverage of many international events and activities (but by no means all!). TV news produced in other
countries is readily available through many cable systems. (Viewing these programs can be an interesting
experience even for those who cannot understand the language.) Radio news can also be heard on short-wave
radios.

There are many more books and articles written in English by non-U.S. scholars that often give a very different
perspective and interpretation to international relations than the conventional wisdom of Americans. Similarly,
more U.S. scholars are more productive than ever in writing about other countriesí foreign policies. All of these
contributions can enrich and broaden oneís understanding of post-Cold War international relations.