Research Design Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Research Design - Essay Example The issues with designing research problems, methods and studies can be put into a few categories: Choice of experiment design such as the usage of qualitative or quantitative data, the nature of the hypothesis at question, moral and ethical concerns, countering for bias and experimental error, and designing models that allow factors such as causation to be confidently discussed. Creswell argues that variables should be defined in three categories: Independent, dependent and control (2009, 151). Independent variables are those that the researcher can control, dependent variables are ones that the researcher expects to be changed, â€Å"dependent† on the independent variable. It's important to note that, when research examines correlations about data, the choice of the independent and dependent variable can become arbitrary: A causal model has to be established by more than just declaring which is independent and which is dependent. If I am saying that height and weight are cor related, I can have height be the independent variable that leads to changes in the dependent variable of weight or I can do it vice versa: The results and the correlations will be identical. Where the independent and dependent variable matters are for experiments or for situations where causality can be argued due to a complex model. In the case of an experiment, the independent variable is what is being administered and the dependent variable what is being observed. In this case, it is impossible to swap them: Offering people medication and seeing if it cures their migraines with a placebo study is rather different from offering people migraines and seeing if it produces a cure. Control variables are, in any complex model, by far the most important. This is because the only way to control for spuriousness is to control for all possible confounding variables. There is undoubtedly a correlation between the amount of homeless people and the amount of doctors in a city, but neither ca use the other: The city's size controls for both. Experimental designs control by making sure groups are identical, whereas data analysis controls by making sure that data points are compared that are identical in every way aside from the difference being analysed. A simple study that makes a correlation between education and eventual income has to control for, among other factors, race, socioeconomic status of parents, wealth of social networks, perceived quality of college, actual quality of college, gender, sexual orientation and dozens of other factors to be clearly meaningful. The design of the study must also be determined to be quantitative, qualitative or mixed. Creswell (2009) defines qualitative procedures as â€Å"rely[ing] on text and image data† and argues that qualitative procedures are ones that cannot be easily enumerated. Note that asking someone, â€Å"How does this make you feel?† and writing down their response is qualitative while asking â€Å"How does this make you feel, from 1 to 9, one being worst and nine being best†, is quantitative even though both are asking about the same phenomenon,