Research Design

Research Design

By Rhoda Marshall

There are of course many more!

There are 4 types of Research Designs that we will explore

Poll

What types of research designs look familiar to you?

• Survey

• Ethnography

• Experiment

• Secondary Sources

You probably answered survey for sure

They are the most common form of research design

​"Non-academic" surveys include

How was your experience? (McDonald's; shopping, etc)

How satisfied are you?

The question right before this slide could be a survey in a way!

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Important in the business world and user-experience world​

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•Online or paper

•Lower response rate (paper = throw it away; online, fatigue)

•Can’t understand thought process as much

Questionnaire

•Face-to-face, verbally, or online

•High response rate (usually because of personal request)

•Ability of interviewer to go offscript and probe for additional comments to further understand phenomena

Interviews

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Surveys: Series of questions are asked to respondents verbally, online, or on paper

Multiple Select

What might be some downsides to surveys? More than one might be correct!

• Expensive

• Time-consuming

Yes, surveys are time-consuming, especially if you have to keep calling people!

Surveys also take a lot of time to develop- you want to ask the right questions to make sure that you get the results you want!- it is an art form​

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Surveys are expensive in that

you need someone who knows how to create them

you need the funds to distribute the survey

either in-person (think door to door or even calling), mailing, or

creating a website or having a subscription to a survey site like SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics

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However! Surveys can help you understand about specific issues​

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Surveys can be quantitative or qualitative, open or closed

Multiple Choice

Which is an example of an OPEN survey question?

• What factors do you consider prior to posting an image [on social media]?

• Did you play video games during the isolation period?

  Yes

  No

Multiple Choice

Which is an example of a CLOSED survey question?

• How many social media apps do you have on your phone?

• What time of day do you play videogames?

  •Just woken up

  •At lunch,

  •In the afternoon,

  •At dinner,

  •After dinner

Mean that the answers are chosen "for you" - you can't make up an answer

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Disadvantage is what if respondents' answer doesn't fit the choices given- do they skip? do they answer the closest? Researcher can't tell either​

For example- after dinner: what if you play at 2 AM in the morning? That's way after dinner but it'd be the same response as someone who plays at like 8 pm.​

Closed Questions

Mean that you can write your response

Note that in the second question, you had to write how many apps you had, there wasn't a number for you to pick!​

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Disadvantage is that researcher has to figure out common responses, thus more work, but you get a better clue as to what the respondents are thinking​

Open Questions

Experiments

You probably recognized this one too!

Experiments!

•More popular in psychological studies, but sociologists can use them to study cause and effect relationships in a controlled environment

•Studies need to have 2 or more groups

Control group- not exposed to independent variable

Experimental group- exposed to independent variable (or “treatment” )

•Researchers need to be wary of how their presence effects the behaviors of research subjects- known as the Hawthorne Effect

Subject | Subject

Multiple Select

What could be an example of the Hawthorne Effect?

• Working more productively when your bosses are watching you

• Children behaving when their parents or an authority figure is watching them

• Changing your behavior because researchers are watching you

• All of these are examples of the Hawthorne Effect

Multiple Choice

What do you think happens when you are using a secondary source?

• You're creating questions about something that you find an answer to

• You're putting people into group to see if there's a cause and effect relationship going on

• You're utilizing already-collected data, like the Census, movie scripts, letters, or publicly available data sets

• You're observing people

The work in collecting responses is already done for you! You can just utilize data. However, the questions that were used might not be worded how you wanted them.

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Secondary Source: Good and bad

Multiple Choice

Which design haven't we examined yet?

• Survey

• Experiment

• Ethnography

• Secondary Sources

Ethnography

Sometimes called "field work" study

•Done via observation

•Direct participation by closely watching a group or organization

•Interviews and collecting historical information are also types of ethnography

•Detailed notes are taken throughout and then later examined for major themes

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Sometimes can occur in cultures unlike yours, but can also occur locally, such as observing at the mall​

Multiple Select

What might be some bad things/ cons about conducting ethnographies?

There are multiple correct answers

• Getting access to the people that you want to study

• Extremely timely on the researcher's end

• Your personal biases may get in the way of truly observing what is happening

  "seeing what you want to see"

​To wrap up this lesson:

Table 2-3 Major Research Designs

Open Ended

I'm leaving you with an open survey question!

What are your thoughts on these "quiz-like" read-through lessons?

Do you like them, dislike them, prefer lecture, etc?