Research Methods for Business Management (MOD001105)

Module Leader: Dr Noah Karley Email: [email protected] Room LAB322 Ext. 5739

Lecture 4

Research Design

Teaching Objectives
Understand the importance of your decisions when designing research and the need to achieve methodological coherence throughout your own research design. Explain the differences between quantitative, qualitative and multiple methods research designs and choose between these to design your own research. Explain the differences between exploratory, descriptive and explanatory research to understand the nature of your own research. Identify the main research strategies and choose from amongst these to achieve coherence throughout your research design.
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Teaching Objectives
Consider the implications of the time frames required for different research designs when designing your own research. Consider some of the main ethical issues implied by your research design. Identify some of the issues that affect the quality of research and consider these when designing your own research; Consider the constraints of your role as researcher when designing your own research.
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Choice in Research Design

Your research design is the general plan of how you will go about answering your research question(s). It will contain clear objectives derived from your research question(s), specify the sources from which you intend to collect data, how you propose to collect and analyse these, discuss ethical issues and the constraints you will inevitably encounter.

Choice in Research Design

The first methodological choice is related to whether you follow a single quantitative or qualitative (mono method) or multiple methods research design. Each of these options is likely to call for a different set of elements to achieve coherence in your research design. The nature of your research project will also be either exploratory, descriptive, explanatory or a combination of these.

Choice in Research Design

Within your research design you will need to use one or more research strategies, to ensure coherence within your research project. Their fit to research philosophy and to quantitative, qualitative or multiple methods research methodologies. Your methodological choice and related strategies will also influence the selection of an appropriate time horizon. Each research design will lead to potential ethical concerns and it will be important to consider these, in order to minimise or overcome them.

Choice in Research Design

It is also important to establish the quality of your research design.

Finally, you should recognise the practical constraints that will affect the research design, especially the nature of your own role as researcher.
The above aspects of your research design are vital to understand what you wish to achieve and how you intend to do so.

Quantitative, Qualitative or Multiple Methods

Quantitative is often used as a synonym for any data collection technique (such as a questionnaire) or data analysis procedure (such as graphs or statistics) that generates or uses numerical data.
In contrast, qualitative is often used as a synonym for any data collection technique (such as an interview) or data analysis procedure (such as categorising data) that generates or uses nonnumerical data.

Quantitative, Qualitative or Multiple Methods

Quantitative research is usually associated with a deductive approach, where the focus is on using data to test theory. However, it may also incorporate an inductive approach, where data are used to develop theory.
Quantitative research examines relationships between variables, which are measured numerically and analysed using a range of statistical techniques. It often incorporates controls to ensure the validity of data.

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Quantitative, Qualitative or Multiple Methods

Qualitative research is associated with an interpretive philosophy. It is interpretive because researchers need to make sense of the subjective and socially constructed meanings expressed about the phenomenon being studied.
Qualitative research studies participants meanings and the relationships between them, using a variety of data collection techniques and analytical procedures, to develop a conceptual framework. Data collection is non-standardised so that questions and procedures may alter and emerge during a research process that is both naturalistic and interactive.

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Quantitative, Qualitative or Multiple Methods

A multiple methods research design may use either a deductive or inductive approach and is likely to combine both. For example, quantitative or qualitative research may be used to test a theoretical proposition or propositions, followed by further quantitative or qualitative research to develop a richer theoretical perspective. A theoretical perspective may also be used to provide some direction for the research. In this way a particular theory may be used to provide a focus for the research and to limit its scope.
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Quantitative, Qualitative or Multiple Methods

Reasons for using a mixed design
1. Initiation Initial use of a qualitative or quantitative methodology may be used to define the nature and scope of sequential quantitative or qualitative research. May also be used to provide contextual background and to better understand the research problem. May also help in the formulation or redrafting of research questions, interview questions and questionnaire items and the selection of samples, cases and participants.

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Quantitative, Qualitative or Multiple Methods

2. Facilitation During the course of the research, one method may lead to the discovery of new insights which inform and are followed up through the use of the other method.
3. Complementarity Use of mixed methods may allow meanings and findings to be elaborated, enhanced, clarified, confirmed, illustrated or linked. 4. Interpretation One method (e.g. qualitative) may be used to help to explain relationships between variables emerging from the other (e.g. quantitative).

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Quantitative, Qualitative or Multiple Methods

5. Generalisability Use of mixed methods may help to establish the generalisability of a study or its relative importance. In a similar way the use of mixed methods may help to establish the credibility of a study or to produce more complete knowledge.
6. Diversity Use of mixed methods may allow for a greater diversity of views to inform and be reflected in the study. 7. Problem solving Use of an alternative method may help when the initial method reveals unexplainable results or insufficient data.
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Quantitative, Qualitative or Multiple Methods

8. Focus One method may be used to focus on one attribute, while the other method may be used to focus on another attribute.

9. Triangulation Mixed methods may be used in order to combine data to ascertain if the findings from one method mutually corroborate the findings from the other method.
10. Confidence Findings may be affected by the method used. Use of a single method will make it impossible to ascertain the nature of that effect. To seek to cancel out this method effect, it is advisable to use mixed methods. This should lead to greater confidence in your Conclusions.

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Nature of Research Design

The way in which you ask your research question will inevitably involve you in exploratory, descriptive or explanatory research leading to an answer that is either descriptive, descriptive and explanatory, or explanatory.

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Nature of Research Design

An exploratory study is a valuable means to ask open questions to discover what is happening and gain insights about a topic of interest. It is particularly useful if you wish to clarify your understanding of a problem, such as if you are unsure of the precise nature of the problem.
There are a number of ways to conduct exploratory research. These include a search of the literature; interviewing experts in the subject; conducting in-depth individual interviews or conducting focus group interviews.
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Nature of Research Design

The object of descriptive research is to gain an accurate profile of events, persons or situations. This may be an extension of, or a forerunner to, a piece of exploratory research or, more often, a piece of explanatory research. It is necessary to have a clear picture of the phenomenon on which you wish to collect data prior to the collection of the data.
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Nature of Research Design

Studies that establish causal relationships between variables may be termed explanatory research . The emphasis here is on studying a situation or a problem in order to explain the relationships between variables. You could go ahead and subject the data to statistical tests such as correlation in order to get a clearer view of the relationship.
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Research Strategy
In general terms, a strategy is a plan of action to achieve a goal. A research strategy may therefore be defined as a plan of how a researcher will go about answering her or his research question. It is the methodological link between your philosophy and subsequent choice of methods to collect and analyse data.
The strategies we will present are: Experiment Survey Archival Research Case Study Ethnography Action Research Grounded Theory Narrative Inquiry
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Research Strategy
Experiment Experiment is a form of research that owes much to the natural sciences, although it features strongly in psychological and social science research. The purpose of an experiment is to study the probability of a change in an independent variable causing a change in another, dependent variable. Two types of (opposing) hypothesis are formulated in a standard experiment: the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis (often referred to as the hypothesis ). The null hypothesis predicts that there will not be a significant difference or relationship between the variables.

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Research Strategy
Survey The survey strategy is usually associated with a deductive research approach. It is a popular and common strategy in business and management research and is most frequently used to answer what, who, where, how much and how many questions. It tends to be used for exploratory and descriptive research. Surveys using questionnaires are popular as they allow the collection of standardised data from a sizeable population in a highly economical way, allowing easy comparison.

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Research Strategy
Archival research An archival research strategy makes use of administrative records and documents as the principal source of data. Although the term archival has historical connotations, it can refer to recent as well as historical documents. An archival research strategy allows research questions which focus upon the past and changes over time to be answered, be they exploratory, descriptive or explanatory.
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Research Strategy
Case study A case study explores a research topic or phenomenon within its context, or within a number of real-life contexts. The case study strategy will be relevant if you wish to gain a rich understanding of the context of the research and the processes being enacted. The case study strategy has considerable ability to generate answers to the question why? as well as what? and how? questions. A single case is often used where it represents a critical case or, alternatively, an extreme or unique case. Conversely, a single case may be selected because it is typical or because it provides you with an opportunity to observe and analyse a phenomenon that few have considered before.

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Research Strategy
Ethnography Ethnography is used to study groups. It is the earliest qualitative research strategy, with its origins in colonial anthropology. The Realist Ethnography focuses on objectivity, factual reporting and identifying true meanings. Interpretive Ethnography places much greater stress on subjective impressions than on objectivity. The interpretive ethnographer believes in the likelihood of multiple meanings rather than being able to identify a single, true meaning. Critical Ethnography has a radical purpose, designed to explore and explain the impact of power, privilege and authority on those who are subject to these influences or marginalised by them.
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Research Strategy
Action Research Action Research is an emergent and iterative process of inquiry that is designed to develop solutions to real organisational problems through a participative and collaborative approach, which uses different forms of knowledge, and which will have implications for participants and the organisation beyond the research project. Action Research will not only be informed by abstract theoretical knowledge, known as propositional knowledge, but also by participants everyday lived experiences (their experiential knowledge) and knowing-in-action (knowledge that comes from practical application).

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Research Strategy
Grounded Theory Grounded theory methodology refers to the researchers choice of this strategy as a way to conduct research. Grounded theory may be used loosely to incorporate methodology and method but more specifically it refers to a theory that is grounded in or developed inductively from a set of data. The researcher collects and analyses data simultaneously, developing analytical codes as these emerge from the data in order to reorganise these data into categories, to recognise relationships between categories, and integrate the categories to produce a theory.

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Research Strategy
Narrative Inquiry
A narrative is a story; a personal account which interprets an event or sequence of events.
We should consider: What is the story about? What happened, to whom, whereabouts and why? What consequences arose from this? What is the significance of these events? What was the final outcome?

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Time Horizon
The snapshot time horizon is what we call crosssectional while the diary perspective we call longitudinal. It is probable that your research will be crosssectional, the study of a particular phenomenon at a particular time, due to time constraints. The main strength of longitudinal research is its capacity to study change and development.
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Ethics (see weeks 5 seminar)

Your choice of topic will be governed by ethical considerations. Your research design may need to consider whether you should collect data if those you are researching are unaware they are the subject of research and so have not consented.
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Quality of the Research Design

Reliability refers to whether your data collection techniques and analytic procedures would produce consistent findings if they were repeated on another occasion or if they were replicated by a different researcher. Construct validity is concerned with the extent to which your research measures actually measure what you intend them to assess. Construct validity is associated with both positivist and quantitative research. Internal validity is established when your research demonstrates a causal relationship between two variables. This concept is associated with both positivist and quantitative research: it can be applied to causal or explanatory studies, but not to exploratory or purely descriptive studies.
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Quality of the Research Design

Examining the logic of research:

Consider the way the research population was chosen. Consider the data collection process. Consider the data analysis. Consider the conclusions.
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Researchers Role
If you are a full-time student you are likely to adopt the role of an external researcher, where you need to identify an organisation within which to conduct your research. You will need to negotiate access to the organisation and to those from whom you would like to collect data.
Having achieved this you will need to gain their trust so that they will participate meaningfully to allow you to collect these data. You will need to take these practical factors into account when formulating your research question and your research design.

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Researchers Role
If you are currently working in an organisation, you may choose to undertake your research project within that organisation, adopting the role of an internal researcher or practitioner researcher. You are unlikely to encounter one of the most difficult hurdles that an external researcher has to overcome: that of negotiating research access. Indeed, like many people in such a position, you may be asked to research a particular problem by your employer.
As an internal researcher, another advantage for you will be your knowledge of the organisation and all this implies about understanding the complexity of what goes on in that organisation.

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Summary

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Summary

Research design is the way a research question and objectives are operationalized into a research project. The research design process involves a series of decisions that need to combine into a coherent research project. Research design will be informed by your research philosophy. A choice has to be made between using a mono method or multiple methods.

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Summary
The nature of your research design will be exploratory, descriptive or explanatory, or a combination of these. A decision will be made to use one or more research strategies, related to the nature of the research question and objectives and to ensure coherence with the other elements of your research design. The research strategies discussed were: Experiment; Survey; Archival Research; Case Study; Ethnography; Action Research; Grounded Theory; and Narrative Inquiry.

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Summary
Choice of quantitative, qualitative or multiple methods and related research strategy or strategies will also be related to the choice of an appropriate time horizon. Research ethics play a critical part in formulating a research design. While the exact approach to research design will be governed by ethical considerations, different research designs will also reveal different ethical concerns. Establishing the quality of research is also a critical part of formulating a research design. Researchers from different research traditions have developed different criteria to judge and ensure the quality of research. Practical considerations will also affect research design, including the role of the researcher.
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References
Gay, L. R. Mills, G. E. and Airasian. P. W. (2008). Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Applications. Harlow: Prentice Hall. Saunders, M. Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2012). Research Methods for Business Students. Harlow: Prentice Hall.
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