A research design is considered as a guide or framework for analysis, implementation, and planning of research or a study. It is the guide used in answering the hypothesis or the research question. Obtaining information in social science relevant to the research problem calls for the specification of the type of evidence required in the testing of a theory, in program evaluation or inaccurate description and assessment of a finding in relation with a phenomenon that is observable. The main types of research designs are the qualitative, correlational and experimental which vary with the type of research question or hypotheses.
Qualitative Research
Qualitative research is exploratory research primarily used to gain comprehension of motivations, opinions and underlying reasons. Qualitative research offers perceptions on the topic of research hence aiding in the development of hypothesis and ideas for research. A qualitative research design is more applicable and significant when working with a complex subject. It helps in the revealing o simple linear relations between patterns within phenomena, qualitative techniques that yield more insightful and richer data and the discrete variables. The research design is more applicable when the researcher is faced with a small research budget and with restricted sample size. For instance, with the availability of only 3 people in a town who qualify to be used as the subjects for research, doing comprehensive interviews is more worth than other means of quantitative research. Interviewing the three potential subjects is more economical and time-consuming than other research designs of acquiring information during a research. With qualitative research, useful data is always generated during the research within the same time frame allocated for the research.
Qualitative research is mainly used by people to gain insights about a theory, issue or a problem and seeks to establish a narrative by providing information why something is the way it is. Being a subjective research design, more nonexperimental methods are used to obtain the information. Observation is the simplest method of qualitative research. Observation method of data collection is mainly used when the researcher wants to examine a subject in its natural environment. Besides observation, interviews are also used in the obtaining information from correspondents on the matter of research.
Experimental Research
Experimental research design, on the other hand, is the attempt of a researcher to establish control over factors that may affect the findings of an experiment in predicting or determining the possible outcomes. It can also be said to be a procedural blueprint that enables a researcher to test and establish his hypothesis through arrival at a valid conclusion between the dependent and independent variables’ relationship and is the conceptual framework within which a researcher conducts an experiment. It mainly involves the identification of the problem, deducing and formulating the consequences of a hypothesis of the research and the construction of the experimental design that is a representation of all the elements relations and the conditions of the consequences. They are useful in the assessment of the causal impact of the manipulations of the experimentation on dependent variables hence allowing for arrival at conclusions concerning the causal relationships between variables. However, it is experimentally impossible to manipulate many significant variables and may turn to be time consuming and expensive.
In experimental research design, the researcher develops a hypothesis to be proven by the results of the experiment. For instance, in establishing the reason why flowers are withering in one part of the nation and not the other, a researcher will obtain sample leaves and essential parts of the plant and soil from the region where withering is witnessed and the other region without withering which will act as a control experiment. He will then analyze the samples in a controlled environment like a laboratory and report his findings and offer a recommendation to the problem.
Correlational Research
The correlational research design is a non-experimental research design where two variables are measured by the researcher to assess the statistical relationship between the two with no effort or little for the controlling of the extraneous variable. Two primary reasons why that would make a researcher interested in statistical relationship between variables opt for correlation study other than experimental study include the existence of doubt that the statistical relationship under investigation is a casual relationship, for instance, in the evaluation of a extraversion test using a bigger sample population against a test that had been validated. The second reason that would make a researcher choose on this research design is the when the statistical relationship of interest is thought to be causal, but the independent variables cannot be manipulated by the researcher because of being unethical, impractical or impossible. Correlation research design allows for testing of an expected relationship among or between variables and in the establishment of predictions it can however not be used in drawing the inferences about casual relations among or between variables.
Unlike experimentation, correlation enhances the observation of the relationship between variables in a more natural environment without the control of the variables using experiments. In correlation research, the variables of research interact out the laboratory in a free environment. The correlational research design can be employed in the establishment of the cause of a phenomenon since the variables are not controlled. One of its main advantages is that it enables the researcher to obtain more information unlike in experimentation and allows for further research by other scholars though the determination of a direction of the relationship and strength for future studies focusing on the cause experimentally.
