Process and Design

The importance of planning and timetabling

All research projects require meticulous planning before collection of data begins and before any writing commences. Look at the Project Management section for further advice.

Topic selection

The choice of research project is very important and is normally submitted in the form of a research proposal. Students are often encouraged to come up with their own ideas but members of academic staff may also offer topics for consideration. Projects linked with external companies or organisations may be acceptable, but please remember that there may be issues relating to intellectual property rights (IPR), resources, commercial confidentiality, etc. Such issues must be discussed thoroughly and resolved prior to commencing project work.

Whichever route you take, the research topic must be of an appropriate level and must demonstrate a degree of originality and analysis in your subject area. Spend time scoping possible areas of research by understanding what already exists, and discussing this with your supervisor.

Your project should be challenging, but feasible within the constraints of time and facilities, without being over-ambitious. When selecting or coming up with original ideas for a research topic you should consider the following points:

Interest

You must select a topic in which you are interested. The deeper your interest, the better the final project is likely to be.
Resources

You must consider what resources you will need to carry out the work. If the dissertation you have in mind requires more time/ money/equipment/materials than are available, you should modify your ideas.
Existing knowledge

Your topic should have a strong link with an area already covered in your programme, providing you with a basic amount of information on which to build. The topic may link in with your previous experience if appropriate.
Scope

It is vitally important that you restrict the scope of your dissertation. It is much better to study a small area in depth than to deal superficially with a broader topic. Students who adopt the former approach nearly always produce a better dissertation and feel more satisfied with their work.
Hazard identification and risk assessment

If your project work involves any site visits, laboratory work or field work it is important that you carry out an appropriate risk assessment. Standard forms for this are available (produced by the University or by the Health and Safety Executive), which give guidance on how to identify hazards, estimate risks and take appropriate action to minimise them. If in doubt about any issues relating to health and safety, you should consult with your supervisor, or the safety advisor for your School/University/external organisation.

Ethics

Advice and guidance about ethics and applying for ethics approval are covered in the next section (Integrity and Ethics) of this course https://generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk/researchmethods/integrity-and-ethics/

Research Design

This section will discuss the processes involved in the selection of the most appropriate research design and methods for your project.

Selecting your research design

This section is adapted from Bryman, A. (2004). Social Research Methods (2nd Ed.) Oxford University Press, Oxford/ New York.

When selecting a framework for the collection and analysis of data, it is essential that you consider three important criteria:

Reliability
In general, reliability is concerned with the question of whether the results of a study are repeatable. It is an indication of the ability of a system to perform and maintain its functions consistently in routine circumstances as well as hostile or unexpected circumstances. Reliability is particularly important in quantitative research and may refer to:
- the statistical reliability of a set of data
- the experimental reliability of an experiment
- data reliability, a property of some disk arrays in computer storage
- reliability engineering ensures a system will be reliable when operated in a specified manner
- reliability theory, as a theoretical concept, to explain biological aging and species longevity
- reliability (computer networking) is a category used to describe protocols.
Replication

It is sometimes necessary for researchers to replicate (i.e. reproduce or duplicate) the findings of others; in order for this to happen, a study must be replicable. A study must be replicable in order that the reliability of a measure or a concept can be determined.

*Replications should not be confused with repeated measurements. Repeated measurements refer to taking several measurements of a single occurrence of a specific phenomenon.*
Validity
Validity is concerned with the integrity of the conclusions generated from a piece of research. A valid measure must be reliable, but a reliable measure need not be valid. Validity refers to obtaining results that accurately reflect the concept being measured and it implies reliability (consistency).

The main types of validity that are typically distinguished include:
- measurement (or construct) validity g. does an IQ test really measure variations in intelligence?
- internal validity g. if we suggest that x causes y, can we be sure that it is x that is responsible for the variation in y and not something else?
- external validity g. can the results of a study be generalised beyond the specific research content?
- ecological validity g. are social scientific findings applicable in people’s everyday, natural social settings?
According to classical test theory, validity cannot exceed reliability.

There are five main types of research design:

Experimental

A true experiment is often used as a yardstick against which non-experimental research is assessed. A laboratory experiment takes place in a laboratory or in a contrived situation, whereas field experiments take place in real-life settings, such as in rivers, organisations or classrooms.
Cross-sectional

A cross-sectional design entails the collection of data on more than one case and at a single point in time in order to collect a body of quantifiable or quantitative data in connection with two or more variables. These are then examined to detect patterns of association e.g. survey research in which data are collected predominantly by questionnaire or by structured interview.
Longitudinal

Examine the change of a system (e.g. a study of changing relationships in a troop of chimps in Africa) over time. Examples include the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the National Child Development Survey (NCDS).
Case study

A basic case study entails the detailed and intensive analysis of a single case and is concerned with complexity and particular nature of the case in question e.g. studies on a single community, school, organisation, event or individual.
Comparative

This design simply entails a study using more or less the same identical methods of two contrasting cases.

Questions and title

This section discusses the importance of selecting the most appropriate research title and questions.

Writing research questions

It is important that your study is organised around a set of questions that will guide your research. When selecting these questions, it is useful to write them so that they frame the study and will form the basis for your research plan. It is important that these questions establish the link between your study and other research that has preceded it; they should also clearly show the relationship of your research to your field of study.

It might help you to start by writing a short sentence describing your research, use this as a working title. This should help formulate your research questions keeping you focused on the aims and objectives of your research.

Refining the research question

To help you refine your question try and answer the following questions:

What topic have you chosen and what interests you about this?

Can you write a working title to get you started?

Are you focusing on any period of time?

Have you specified a geographical area to look at? If so where?

What aspect would you like to research further?

Research questions:
- should be clear and understandable to you and to others.
- should be capable of development into a research design, so that data may be collected in relation to them. This means that extremely abstract terms are unlikely to be suitable.
- should connect with established theory and research i.e. there should be a literature on which you can draw to help illuminate how your research questions should be approached. Making connections with theory and research will also allow you to show how your research has made a contribution to knowledge and understanding.
- should be linked to each other; unrelated research questions are unlikely to be acceptable, since you should be developing an argument as part of your study.
- should have potential for making a contribution to knowledge, however small.
- should be neither too large (so that you would need a massive grant to study them) nor too small (so that you cannot make a reasonably significant contribution to your area of study).
- should be reasonable considering the amount of time you have to complete your research. For example, if you are doing a one-year project it is unlikely you’d have time to get ethical approval and have time to do the research if wanting to work with vulnerable adults.

In addition, a good research question must:
- State the topic of the study, e.the main idea
- Clearly show the purpose of the study
- Be interesting, with good style
- Clearly show the direction of your argument
- Be written in focused, specific language
- Be agreed with your supervisor(s) and funders (if any)

It is important to remember that you cannot answer all the research questions that occur to you and you should be guided by the principle that the research questions you choose should be related to one another. If you are stuck about how to formulate research questions, it is a good idea to look at journal articles, research monographs or past dissertations to see how other researchers have formulated them.

Aims and objectives

It is useful to consider your research questions in terms of aims and objectives.

The aim of the work should be clearly and concisely defined.

Aims:
- the general intentions of the research, which ‘paint a picture’ of your research project
- emphasis on the aims
- address the long-term project outcomes
Once aims have been established, the next task is to formulate the objectives. Generally, a project should have no more than two or three aims statements, while it may include a number of objectives consistent with them.
Objectives are subsidiary to aims:
- they are steps required to achieve the goals
- objectives emphasise how aims are to be accomplished
- they must be highly focused and feasible
- objectives address the more immediate project outcomes
- they make accurate use of concepts
- objectives must be sensible and precisely described
- they should read as an ‘individual’ statement to convey your intentions
Here is an example of a project aim and subsidiary objectives:
Aim
- To critically assess the collection and disposal operations for bulky household waste in order to identify factors, which contribute to performance and technical efficiency.
Objectives
- To critically assess bulky waste operations by local authorities, including volumes/types of materials arising and current disposal/recovery routes.
- To classify and evaluate the operation of furniture recovery schemes nationally.
- To make recommendations to improve the operational effectiveness of, and to maximise recovery opportunities of bulky waste collection.
Aims and objectives should:
- be concise and brief
- be interrelated
- be realistic in terms what can be done in the project
- provide you and your Supervisor with indicators of how you intend to:
  - approach the literature and theoretical issues related to your project
  - access your chosen subjects, respondents, units, goods or services
  - develop a sampling frame and strategy or a rationale for their selection
  - develop a strategy and design for data collection and analysis
  - deal with ethical and practical problems in your research
Aims and objectives should not:
- be vague, ambitious or very broad in scope
- just be a list of things related to your research topic

At the conclusion of your project you will need to assess whether or not you have met your objectives and if not, why not. However, you may not always meet your aims in full, since your research may reveal that your questions were inappropriate, that there are intervening variables you could not account for or that the circumstances of the study have changed, etc. Whatever the case, your conclusion will still have to reflect on how well the research design, which was guided by your objectives, has contributed to addressing your aims.

Title

The title for your research should be a clear and precise description of the topic. A title can be phrased as a question or hypothesis (although it doesn’t need to be).

Preparing a good title means:

having the most important words appear toward the beginning of your title
limiting the use of ambiguous or confusing words
breaking your title up into a title and subtitle when you have too many words
including key words that will help researchers in the future find your work

This completes your research section. Move on to the Integrity and Ethics module.

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