A well-crafted research design is essential for students to meet the project’s aims and objectives. It also ensures that the results are reliable and valid. In simple words, a research project design is a blueprint for how your work will be carried out.
Before you start writing your dissertation, you need to decide how to plan the design of your research. A research design is a framework that contains many research components. It is considered an overall structure or plan that guides the research process of a project.
In the article below, we are going to discuss the types of research designs in dissertation writing and their significance.
Research Design in Dissertation Writing
Once you have clearly defined the aims and objectives of your research, the study design becomes essential in providing help with the dissertation writing process. It specifically outlines the methodology you will follow and details the data collection methods you plan to use.
This structured approach not only guides your research but also enhances the overall quality of your dissertation.
This method can give you a fairly exceptional outline of your dissertation project. This design is more like a structured plan that can answer specific questions.
A good research design has the following characteristics:
- Neutrality: Ensures the objectivity of data analysis.
- Reliability: Produces consistent and credible results after repeated observations.
- Validity: Uses appropriate techniques and tools for accurate measurements.
- Generalisability: Implements the research results across broader contexts that go beyond the research study samples.
When you conduct research, you need to have a crystal-clear idea of what you want to get from it and the ways you should use to get the results. A good design of research helps you collect reliable and accurate data and assists you in drawing valid conclusions from the research work.
Types of Research Design in Dissertation Writing
The nature of a research dissertation design influences the data collection methods you use and, obviously, the research results. Depending on the design type, we shall explain the nature of research studies now.
As per Resarch.com, there are 4 popular types of dissertation research in 2024. Their names are mentioned here:
- Descriptive research
- Experimental research designs
- Explanatory research
- Correlational research
Let’s discuss these types in further detail now.
1. Descriptive Research Designs
In this kind of research design, the researchers are usually interested in describing a phenomenon, case, or situation. As a design based on the theory, it answers the questions related to the when, why, how, and where of your research work.
Descriptive research generally directs scholars to understand the research problem before discussing why it happens in the first place. It also provides the research scholars with an opportunity to investigate the problem in detail.
An example of the descriptive research design is market research. Analyzing the trends of a market can be helpful for an investor. The descriptive research design tells people about the investment.
The following image by Research.com also explains the same concept:
This study design works well when dealing with unbiased data. Such data is usually concerned with the discovery of recurring behaviors and research phenomena.
What a Descriptive Study Doesn’t Tell You?
- The results of descriptive research cannot be used to discover definitive answers or to disprove a hypothesis.
- As opposed to the design involving quantitative methods, you cannot replicate the observational methods of the descriptive research.
- The descriptive research function heavily depends on the instrumentation for observation and measurement.
2. Experimental Research Designs
When using an experiment, the research work tries to establish a cause-and-effect relationship in the given phenomenon. This is more likely a causal design of the research where the students are meant to observe the effect of a variable on another dependent one.
During the process, the researcher establishes a theory about what may occur based on the experiment models that they follow.
Carrying on the example discussed in the first point, an investor may modify a variable to see if such a change affects other factors or not. For instance, they may change the price to see if other variables will be affected or not.
It is more like a practical route that helps the researchers find out what exactly can be beneficial for their research and what won’t be.
Essentially, this design tests a case-and-effect relationship of the variables used in research. For instance, the researchers have to study the impact of one independent variable on the other one.
What an Experimental Study Doesn’t Tell You?
- The study design of an experimental research method is artificial and may not be generalized well in the practical world.
- The artificial nature of experiments may change the responses or behaviors of subjects.
- The experimental research designs can be quite costly if special facilities are required.
- You cannot study some research problems due to the technical or ethical nature of their experiments.
- Sometimes, it is difficult to apply qualitative and ethnographic methods to experimental research studies.
3. Explanatory Research Designs
As the name suggests, explanatory research explains the findings of the researchers and sheds light on the ideas they develop during the process. Using this kind of research design for your dissertation, you can explore the boundaries and limits of your research.
Also, it can present the results in a way that answers the why, how, and what of the central thesis of research.
The students use explanatory study designs to uncover the underlying issues and new angles on a given problem. Sometimes, such perspectives may not have been apparent previously and may have been discovered later.
When making such kinds of designs, students need to adapt to the new data and research findings with an unbiased state of mind. Keep in mind that the purpose of explanatory research is not to get conclusive answers.
This study design works best with the identification of the underlying causes of an issue. It also talks about what can you do to address the issues you discover during the research.
What an Explanatory Study Doesn’t Tell You?
- The causality research designs help the researchers understand why the world does the way it does.
- Such research methods provide a causal link between several variables and rule out other possibilities.
- Sometimes, the replication of data is possible.
- The study may have internal validity because of the systematic approach it follows for the selection of subjects and the equity among the groups that are compared.
4. Correlational Research Designs
Unlike experimental research, this kind of design attempts to establish a relationship between two given variables.
The only difference is that an experimental design monitors the causal changes between the variables while this kind of design looks for similarities or associations between those.
Since this is non-experimental, it relies on the evaluation of the relationship between the variables that undergo statistical analysis. For the calculation of the correlation, scholars have to use Pearson’s correlation coefficient.
If it leans more towards a variable, it means that there is a similarity between the two. If there is a negative value, it denotes that variables are related to each other in an indirectly proportional way.
This kind of design works best when the research scholar has to study the degree of mutual association of two or more variables. It also checks how two or more variables are connected in the real world.
What a Correlational Study Doesn’t Tell You?
- The data is not that reliable and the observation of tasks is a difficult and time-consuming task.
- The results may reflect the findings related to a unique sample of the population.
- There can be a bias when checking the results.
- You might not be able to determine the cause-and-effect relationship between the given variables.
- The sources you come across may not be credible enough for you; hence, there is no reliability.
Research Design Example
Several leading dissertation writing companies online provide tailored research designs in dissertation writing samples to the students. The aims and questions of your dissertation greatly impact the nature of a design.
Here is a research design on the topic of Improving the Reliability of Wireless Sensor Networks.
The design has been taken from Research Gate.
Conclusion
Now, you must understand the basics of crafting a research design for your research.
Summing up, in your dissertation, you can define the study design as a general plan that assists you in answering the research questions. Also, such designs are independent of the data collection method, and hence, the scholars can perform any kind of dissertation based on the topic.
All in all, you can combine different research methods to fit into the design of the study.
Likewise, you can have several ways to get complementary data and enhance the overall comprehensiveness of the information. Before working on your dissertation project, you must devise a research plan that best suits your interests.