What Research Design Is
The week that carries this title supplies an overview sentence, three objectives and exactly one definition — and the definition is of methodology, not of design. This page sets out what is there, what is missing, and where you will have to go elsewhere.
The whole of the week's account of design
The supplied teaching source devotes a week to research design. It consists of a twenty-slide deck and a separate study-notes document. Everything the week says about what a design is sits in two sentences on the third slide.
Read the second sentence as a set of conditions and you get three of them. The source does not number them and states no count; three is what the sentence yields when it is unpacked. Everything else in the week is downstream of those three.
The three conditions the overview places on a design
Appropriate to addressing your questions
The design has to answer the questions you have actually posed, not adjacent ones. The source states the condition and supplies no test for appropriateness at this point; the nearest thing to a test appears later in the week as a set of questions to ask yourself when selecting a method.
You have the skills and interests to implement it
Note the second noun. Interest, not just capability, is written into the condition. This is the only place in the week where interest appears as a design constraint, and it is not carried into either of the week's two later lists of selection criteria.
All of the elements of the plan are achievable
Achievability is asserted of every element, not of the plan in aggregate. The source attaches no feasibility test, no resourcing model and no schedule to this condition here; a completion constraint appears separately in the methodology decisions slides.
Those three conditions are worth keeping, because they are the only statement in the week that treats a design as a single object with properties. The rest of the week treats design as a sequence of separate choices — methodology, then methods, then quality criteria — without ever returning to the whole.
The three objectives, and the verb that undercuts them
The week states its objectives on the same slide as the overview. The lead-in reads "At the completion of this topic you should be able to consider:", and three objectives follow.
- "Create methodology appropriate to proposal"
- "Compare types of methods"
- "Determine benefits and disadvantages of types"
This matters more than a grammatical quibble, because two of the three objectives turn on a word the week never fixes. "Types" appears twice and is never anchored to a taxonomy.
WHAT THE WEEK PROMISED AGAINST WHAT IT SUPPLIED
| Stated objective | What the week supplies | Delivery |
|---|---|---|
| "Create methodology appropriate to proposal" | Four inputs to the decision, two process requirements, three capability tests, an instruction to justify the choice, and nine selection questions | Partly delivered — you are given the decision criteria but not the options they apply to |
| "Compare types of methods" | A grid of ten method names. No dimension of comparison is applied to any of them | Not delivered — the only comparison performed anywhere in the week is between the two paradigms, which is a comparison of approaches, not of method types |
| "Determine benefits and disadvantages of types" | Nothing for any method or methodology. The week's only benefits-and-drawbacks structure attaches to triangulation | Not delivered — no benefit and no disadvantage is stated for any of the ten methods or any of the seven methodologies |
Source delivery audit. This is a finding about the supplied files, not a claim about the subject as ordinarily taught.
The one definition offered is of methodology
Slide four is titled "Your research methodology" and carries the week's only definitional sentence. It is worth reading with the hedges intact, because the hedges are doing real work.
"May sometimes be referred to" is a double hedge. The source does not claim methodology and paradigm are the same thing; it reports that some people use the words that way. Treat the equivalence as a usage note, not as a definition you can rely on when you write your own methodology chapter.
- Literature review
- Research methodology
- Data collection methods
Sequential or co-developing — the week says both
The same slide that places methodology between two neighbouring stages also states that the thinking evolves from the beginning. The two accounts are not compatible and the source does not reconcile them.
The staged account
- Methodology "is situated after 'literature review' and before 'data collection' methods"
- Implies methodology is settled once the literature review is complete
- Implies data collection is designed after the methodology is fixed
- Supports a linear write-up: review, then methodology, then methods
The co-developing account
- "Ideas about the research methodology and data collection methods to be used in the project develop as the idea for the research project develops"
- Places both from the outset — before the literature review is finished
- Treats methodology and methods as maturing together rather than in sequence
- Supports an iterative record in which early choices are versioned, not final
There is a second, sharper conflict in the same neighbourhood. Slide four states that "data collection methods are a major part of the methodological framework for the research project" — methods sitting inside methodology. Two slides later, methods are introduced as a separate category, and the week's comparison table lists "Methodology" and "Methods" as two distinct rows. Nested in one place, parallel in another. That conflict is worked through in full on Methods and Their Place in a Design.
The study notes headed "Research Design" contain none
The week's second document is a study-notes file whose only heading is "1. Research Design". Its entire body sits under a single sub-heading: "Why do research?". It is an argument for doing research at all, adapted from a published research-design textbook, and it makes four moves.
- The employment argument. "To increase your chances of getting into graduate school or getting a good job, you can conduct your own research." Completing a project is said to show that you are organised, persistent and capable of getting things done, and organisations increasingly want research done.
- Research as its own reward. Six reasons students are said to enjoy research, hedged throughout — doing rather than reading about work, the teamwork, the creativity of designing a study, the acting sometimes involved, the practical problem-solving, and the excitement of discovery.
- The citizenship and consumer argument. Understanding research design is said to help you "distinguish between science, pseudoscience, non-science, and nonsense", followed by five asserted failures of the world as it is.
- The closing claim. That refining research skills lets you take better advantage of two of culture's greatest achievements, named as science and writing. The stated count of two matches the two named.
The practical consequence is narrow and specific. Every objective, activity and reference for this week has to be taken from the slide deck, because the notes carry none. If you are auditing the material for a programme, that is the finding — and it is one of several recorded on What This Material Does Not Teach. If you are using the material to build your own design, the notes are motivation, not method.
Building a design record when the week does not define design
The source does not prescribe a design record, and what follows is synthesis rather than source. It uses only the week's own conditions and criteria, so nothing in it depends on a definition the material declines to give.
A minimum design record, assembled from the week's own statements
State the questions first, verbatim
Condition one is appropriateness to "the research questions you have posed". You cannot test appropriateness against a question you have paraphrased differently each time it is written down. Fix the wording, then treat it as the thing the rest of the record answers to.
Name the methodology and say why
The week requires you to justify the choice of research methodology. It supplies no criteria, structure, length or worked example for that justification, so write it against the criteria the week does give: the aim, the question, the type of data required, and the location and accessibility of that data.
List each method and what it collects
The week defines methods as the techniques used to gather your data and requires you to justify the collection methods used. One line per method, naming the data it produces and the part of the question that data addresses.
Record the skills and the interest
Condition two is explicit about both. Write down which methods you can already run, which you would be learning during the project, and whether the subject holds your interest for the duration. This is the condition most often left unwritten and most often the one that fails.
Test every element against achievability
Condition three applies to all elements, not to the plan overall. Access, permissions, instrument development, respondent availability and analysis time are each an element. Any one of them that cannot be completed inside the study period breaks the design, and the week states completion within the study period as a hard requirement on the methodology.
Note where you had to go outside the material
Keep an explicit list of terms you had to define from a second source. On this week that list is long, and it is the most useful page of the record when you come to write your methodology chapter and need citations.
What to carry forward
- The week's usable content on design is three conditions: appropriate to the questions, within your skills and interests, achievable in every element.
- Research design is never defined here. Methodology is, doubly hedged, and only by reference to a process model that is never shown.
- Methodology and methods are nested in one place and parallel in another. Say which relationship you are using in your own write-up and stay consistent.
- The study notes for this week are about why to do research, not about how to design it. Take objectives, activities and references from the deck alone.
- Two of the three objectives are undelivered. Plan for a second source before you start, not after you discover the gap.
Frequently asked questions
Does the supplied material define research design?
No. The week carries the title and never defines the term. The closest it comes is an overview sentence saying you must "define the elements of your methodological design" to answer your research questions, and a hedged definition of methodology on a later slide. If you need a citable definition of research design, you will need a methods text outside this material.
What is the difference between methodology and research design here?
The material does not draw one. It defines methodology as the constructive framework of the study and says it may sometimes be referred to as the paradigm, but it never places design and methodology in relation to each other. The overview sentence uses "methodological design" as a single compound term without unpacking it.
Where does methodology sit in the research process?
The source says it sits after the literature review and before data collection methods, within "the model of the research process". That model is not reproduced anywhere in the supplied material, so you have three stages of an unknown total and no statement of what surrounds them.
Why do the study notes for this week not discuss design?
That is a property of the supplied file, not an interpretation. The notes are headed "1. Research Design" and their entire content argues for why a person should do research — employment prospects, enjoyment, and being a better-informed citizen and consumer. The file also appears truncated relative to its own numbering, since it has a section 1 and no later sections.
Can I use the three conditions on a design as a checklist?
Yes, and they are the most transferable thing in the week. Appropriateness to the questions, skills and interests, and achievability of every element are stated plainly and apply to any design. What the source does not give you is a test for any of the three, so the evidence you offer against each condition is yours to construct.
Which taxonomy of "types" do the objectives refer to?
The material never says. Three candidate taxonomies appear — seven methodologies deferred to an earlier topic, ten data-gathering techniques in a grid, and the quantitative or qualitative split — and none is identified as the one meant. Because the objectives ask you to compare types and weigh their benefits, the ambiguity is not cosmetic.
References and source attribution
- O'Leary, Z. 2010, The essential guide to doing your research project, Sage Publications. (The only work listed by the week's slide deck; the 2017 third edition is the edition cited elsewhere in the supplied material.)
- Mitchell, M. & Jolley, J. 2013, Research Design Explained, 8th ed., Cengage Learning. (Named in the week's study notes as the work they are adapted from.)
- Quinlan, C. 2011, Business Research Methods, 1st ed., Cengage Publishing.
- Bryman, A. 2016, Social Research Methods, 5th ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- The supplied teaching source: consolidated weekly slide material and study notes on research design, used here as the basis for every statement attributed to "the source", "the week" or "the material".
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- Test my draft design against the three conditions this week states — appropriate, within my skills and interests, achievable in every element.
- Which terms used in this week's material would I have to define from a second source before writing my methodology chapter?
- My research questions are as follows — help me judge whether my planned design actually addresses them.
- Draft a one-page design record for my project using only criteria the supplied material states.
- Explain the difference between a methodology and a method as this material uses the two words, including where it contradicts itself.