Understanding Research Designs

A research design is a plan to carry out various tasks of the research process. “A traditional research/study design is a blueprint or detailed plan for how a research study is to be completed—operationalizing variables so they can be measured, selecting a sample of interest to study, collecting data to be used as a basis for testing hypotheses, and analyzing …

The study designs in quantitative research are different from the study designs in qualitative research. The following reasons can best describe the difference between quantitative research and qualitative research. Quantitative research involves collection of numerical data, it deduces a relationship between theory and research. Quantitative research uses scientific/empirical approach to solve the problems. To solve the problem under study the …

Types of study designs: On the basis of the reference period, the study designs can be categorized into retrospective, prospective and retrospective-prospective study designs. Retrospective The aim behind retrospective study design is to study some event, phenomenon or situation that has been happened previously. There are only two ways to collect data for a retrospective study: either the investigator collects information from …

On the basis of the nature of the investigation, the study designs can be classified into three types of studies: Experimental study design Non-experimental study design Semi-experimental or quasi-design The experimental study design The experimental study design is one of the most commonly used study design in the social science, psychology, marketing, business, and education. There are many types of …

The placebo design in research is a type of experimental study design. The aim of a placebo design in research is to know the effectiveness of a program or treatment through the use of a placebo group. A placebo group usually get an ineffective treatment or no treatment; for example, in one experiment the experimenter gives the treatment pills to …

Cohort studies are conducted based on some common characteristics among the population. Cohort studies are conducted just like longitudinal study except that the target population in the cohort studies share some common characteristics. The common characteristic can be any factor like age, employment, marriage, education year, fertility behavior or other demographics. A cohort study can be conducted like a cross-sectional …

The number of contacts with the study population is a good way to define the types of study designs. On the basis of the number of contacts with the study population the study design can be classified into three types: Cross-sectional studies Longitudinal studies Before-and-after studies Types of study designs The cross-sectional study design The cross-sectional study design is most …

What is a cross-sectional study A cross-sectional study makes inferences about a population at one point of time. The purpose of these studies is not to follow up with the audience but to collect the data once. When the investigator repeats the cross-sectional study with later surveys he does not choose the same sample rather he takes another sample. The …

The longitudinal study designs study the impact of an intervention, phenomenon, situation or treatment over a period of time. The investigator studies the population at one time and makes record of it and then over a period of time he/she continuously collect data from the same respondents to know the impact of time on the impact of an intervention or …

Retrospective-prospective studies focus on a phenomenon in the past and study it in the future. The only difference between these studies and before-and-after studies is that they do not have a control group. Most of the before-and-after studies without a control group are retrospective-prospective study designs. In retrospective-prospective study design, the investigator collects some data about the population before the …