Research design

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Research design" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Part of a series on
Research
Research design Ethics Proposal Question Writing Argument Referencing
Research strategy Interdisciplinary Multimethodology Qualitative Art-based Quantitative
Philosophical schools Antipositivism Constructivism Critical rationalism Empiricism Fallibilism Positivism Postpositivism Pragmatism Realism Critical realism Subtle realism
Methodology Action research Art methodology Critical theory Grounded theory Hermeneutics Historiography Human subject research Narrative inquiry Phenomenology Pragmatism Scientific method
Methods Analysis Case study Content analysis Descriptive statistics Discourse analysis Ethnography Autoethnography Experiment Field experiment Social experiment Quasi-experiment Field research Historical method Inferential statistics Interviews Mapping Cultural mapping Phenomenography Secondary research Bibliometrics Literature review Meta-analysis Scoping review Systematic review Scientific modelling Simulation Survey
Tools and software Argument technology Geographic information system software Library and information science software Bibliometrics Reference management Science software Qualitative data analysis Simulation Statistics
Philosophy portal
v t e

Research design refers to the overall strategy utilized to answer research questions. A research design typically outlines the theories and models underlying a project; the research question(s) of a project; a strategy for gathering data and information; and a strategy for producing answers from the data.^[1] A strong research design yields valid answers to research questions while weak designs yield unreliable, imprecise or irrelevant answers.^[1]

Incorporated in the design of a research study will depend on the standpoint of the researcher over their beliefs in the nature of knowledge (see epistemology) and reality (see ontology), often shaped by the disciplinary areas the researcher belongs to.^[2][3]

The design of a study defines the study type (descriptive, correlational, semi-experimental, experimental, review, meta-analytic) and sub-type (e.g., descriptive-longitudinal case study), research problem, hypotheses, independent and dependent variables, experimental design, and, if applicable, data collection methods and a statistical analysis plan.^[4] A research design is a framework that has been created to find answers to research questions.^{[citation needed]}