Just like any other kind of design, the process of designing a research project is creative, even artistic. And like other kinds of design, a good one works well and a bad one will just make a mess. Here are the steps to designing a good research project:
Step 1. Articulating Different Points of View about an Issue
The success of a
research design project depends on knowing and understanding how people
understand the issue you plan to research. It is important to be able to articulate how you understand an issue as well as to articulate other perspectives.
Your own perspective will be very important to your research design,
but it will also be important to "see" your issue from other perspectives. In your literature review you will discuss the other ways people understand your issue.
Therefore, the
first step in the research design process is to see what people have
said already about the Big Questions around you want to research. You need to discuss and then explain where your research fits into
the overall “conversation” in the literature on this topic.
Elsewhere we will
discuss further the qualities of a good literature review. But the
first rule is: the sources you use in a literature review should also be
well designed. That is, you should ascertain whether or not the source
you are citing followed the design steps laid out here. Papers that
are peer reviewed
are more likely to be well designed. Papers coming from policy
organizations with agendas may not be open about articulating those
agendas. However, they will be very good at viewing a particular issue
according to a particular perspective. Major policy organizations
depend on maintaining a reputation and may be more transparent in terms
of their criteria. However, many papers that call themselves research
papers are in fact advocacy pieces.
It is good practice to learn how to write an advocacy piece where you
clearly articulate and defend one opinion, and you may be asked to
write such pieces based on your research. However, that is not the
goal of this course.
Step 2. Defining your research question
After you have looked at the conversation surrounding your
topic, you need to clearly define a research question. In some cases, you will be going the other way around, asking a question and then asking how this question helps us understand Big Questions. Your question
may change during the research process, but efficient and focused
research requires that you always have a research question clearly in
mind as you look for information and evidence.
The literature review and research question process is often iterative:
once you formulate your research project, you may find that you may
need to go back and read more of what others said, refine your criteria
again, and re-state your research question in a somewhat different way.
This will also mean that you may have to rework Step 3 as well.
Once you start gathering evidence to
answer your research question, you are likely to get into the boundary
problem. A good researcher is efficient and focused on gathering the
information necessary to answer a specific research question. This
involves making constant decisions about the boundaries of the issue
being researched, asking, “Do I need to expand my gathering of data in
order to answer my question, or is my field of data-gathering
sufficient?” Or, “Am I trying to gather too much information to answer a
focused question? Will I get lost in my research?” Or, "Is my question too big to answer adequately in 10 weeks and 20-25 pages?"
Step 4. Designing your measurement strategy
Next you need to
design your measurement strategy. Like any other
kind of design, if you design it well, it will be efficient and will
create a good product. Well-designed measurement strategies are based on
fulfilling Steps 1-4. However, if you come up with your question first, you will need to iterate between your question and these steps.
To design a good
measurement strategy, you will need some tools. In particular, you
need to understand how to use the concept of validity as a tool to make your measurement design work well.
Step 5: Carrying out your research and analyzing the results
If you used Steps
1-4 to design your research, this part should be straightforward.
However, most good research leads to at least one Surprise – that is,
results that you didn’t expect. An unexpected result is not the product
of a bad research design. In fact, research that is designed to get
expected results is usually not well-designed research. The best
research designs always give you more knowledge than you know what to
do with, and more than your research strategy set out
to do.
Step 6. Understanding trade-offs of alternative designs
Research designs
never satisfy all of the identified requirements necessary to answer a
research question. In your final conclusion, you need to identify the
limitations and comparative trade-offs associated with the research
design you chose.
Step 7: Conclusion
Your conclusion depends on the kind of paper you are writing. If you are researching a policy question (Policy Analysis), you will at the end of your paper introduce your policy proposal or policy reform. You
also, at this point, will discuss the tradeoffs involved in choosing this
policy option over another. If you are evaluating a program (Program Evaluation)
then you are asking whether the program works, looking at various
criteria that defines "works" and creating a measurement machine that
collects data according to those criteria. But in all cases, in the conclusion, you will return to the Big Questions and tell us how your research contributes to answering those larger questions.
No comments:
Post a Comment