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 …
Read More »Study Designs in Quantitative Research
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 …
Read More »Study Designs in Qualitative Research
This article will provide a general idea about the study designs in qualitative research. Qualitative research is commonly used in social sciences, humanity, and education. The below picture shows general steps in designing a qualitative study designs. Qualitative study designs are not based on the process of observation through various techniques. The researcher observes the phenomenon and than analyze it, …
Read More »Types of Study Designs: The number of Contacts
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 …
Read More »The Cross-sectional Study Design in Research
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 …
Read More »The Longitudinal Study Design in Research
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 …
Read More »The Retrospective-Prospective Study Design in Research
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 …
Read More »The Retrospective Study Design in Research
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 written evidence like from books, magazines, newspapers, diaries and other personal records, or he asks the respondents who can recall the situation. Asking …
Read More »The Prospective Study Design in Research
The prospective study design studies the impact of a phenomenon, situation, program, attitude or problem in the future. Most of the studies that are conducted using the prospective study design are also classified as experimental studies since the aim of the investigator is to wait for the impact of a program or a situation to see the results on the …
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