When you start to think of conducting a complex piece of social science or humanities research, how do you structure this? By this what I mean is how do you ensure that all of the aspects (perhaps you call these variables) of the research are included in the design and that their predicted and observed importance (you may call these their effects) are apparent and can be understood?
European funding bodies for postdoc projects always ask for a "state of the art," which is a good place to start any research question: what is the research question, and how does it add to research already undertaken within the field? From there, one can develop a research methodology and approach, and undertake to formulate possible outcomes. Be aware that good research remain research, i.e. one should not know the answers before one actually starts the research. Research should be question-driven and well-informed about other research in the field.
I teach research design. Most of the designs relate to interdisciplinary social sciences with a few earth/hard sciences in the mix. I frequently instruct international groups of upper level undergrads, graduate students and professionals. I often teach this during field schools. Student teams have to dream up a few relevant research questions, formulate hypotheses, come up with a reasonable methodology given constraints and eventually present results in a professional forum within approximately 6 weeks. It's been very successful thus far. Simplicity (not to be confused with simple), clarity and critical thinking are key. 1) Develop a relevant and doable research question; 2) reformulate research question into a hypothesis if necessary (basically, answer the question with knowledge available), 3) develop a flexible methodology (often confused with methods; i.e., methodology is picking the most appropriate methods under given constraints to address the research problem, question, hypothesis... like picking the right tools from a toolbox to fix a flat tire versus paint a house and within the time, money, resource, access, ethical, legal, etc. constraints); this includes background research and analytical and interpretive methods/techniques/approaches in addition to data collection and/or experimentation...; 4) interpretation, discussion, future directions, recommendations, etc. 5) information dissemination and reporting. These can be expanded or collapsed as needed. Each committee, department, institution, agency, etc. usually expects a certain structure or template that is not always as consistent across the board as we would like. Anyway, there's no way to cover everything and consider everything, even with the simplest and most expedient research questions and agendas. Ensuring nothing is missed and all things are covered is impossible. However, it's important to minimize relevant gaps and maximize relevant thoroughness as much as possible. Generally, peer feedback is vitally useful to accomplish this. Also, all aspects can be infinite. Again, it's impossible to account for everything, especially in Social Sciences where percentages and ratios take precedence over absolutes; parameters, variables and such can be recreated, divided, amalgamated in any number of manners; and unexpected outcomes are common, not to mention 'outliers' are always expected. For applied research, there's a need to focus on relevant aspects to address the phenomena, needs, questions and problems at hand. Hope this helps a bit. Let me know. Can always discuss further over messaging. Good question. Thanks.
Good question. My general approach is a theory of action framework that considers actors responding to situations (=perceived and evaluated conditions of actions) according to their interests by formulating goals and utilising resources to achieve these goals. From this follows that interests and properties of actors are always intervening variables. On the conditions side, I have a heuristic that distinguishes kinds of conditions of actions - epistemic/technological, economic, social (in a narrower sense), institutional, and cultural. This gives me a frame for my search that I believe to be exhaustive, i.e. it makes sure that I don't overlook conditions. For empirical investigations, cases are selected in order to systematically vary some of these conditions (described by independent variables), while others are kept constant. Concerning effects, I am only interested in specific effects, which means that I am selective but also open for unexpected effects, feedback loops etc. As a qualitative researcher who is intersted in causal mechanisms, I then thinka bout actions /sequences of actions that mediate between conditions and effects because they are likely to occur under the conditions of interest and are likely to produce the effects I am interested in. These sequences of actions are likely to 'contain' the mechanisms I am looking for.
I'm sorry for this being rather brief and crude but the question is too complex for RG. :)
it is highly connect with research problem and research objectives. Actually what i am going study and why i am going study society.
Research design is guided by your hypothesis or research questions. What do you want to find out and what kind of data is needed. A Case Study research research design may suit qualitative study but a survey research design maybe more appropriate for a large scale quantitative study involving collection of numerical data.
A good research design is the foundation of a good research work which covers objectives, hypotheses, tools of data collection like questionnaire, interview schedule, observation study etc, sampling, area under study, review of literature, and every thing. This ultimately helps you to start and end your research fruitfully. A good supervisor is a blessing to make your study more significant. Paul M.W. Hackett
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