Campus session 2

Developing your research design

Topic?

You will have begun to think of your research topic. It might be a problem you want to solve, a question you want answered or an idea you want tested. You will have begun the process of challenging the topic to

determine if its ‘worthwhile’

Topic?The ‘so what’ factor

The nice to know testIs it done to death

Does it push your buttons?Is it bleeding obvious?

exercise 1

Pair off and explain your topic to your partnerAsk them for a one sentence response to your topicCan they list 5 things they know about that topic?

repeat the process in reverse

Research design you ask?

You need to develop a way to collect, analyse and interpret information that can

be used to solve, answer, prove, inform, explore, describe your topic

What is research design?

A research design is like a master plan that outlines the type of information to be collected, the sources of data and the methods to be used to collect and analyse

the required information.

The objectives of your research are included in the research design to make sure that you gather the appropriate information that will help solve the marketing

management problem.

In real terms research design looks at the rationale of why we are conducting our inquiry in a certain way and suggests tools that can be used to collect data in a way

that supports the aims and outcomes of the research

Research approaches

There is more than one way to approach

your research problem. Research

approaches are designed by you as a researcher in order to provide you with

the ‘best’ data or information.

secondary and primary research

Secondary research approachesSecondary research is information that

already exists. Examples of

secondary research include research projects already undertaken by other people, census data,

features in journals, newspapers,

databases, internal company

documents like memos and annual

reports.

Secondary data can be oral as well as written, and also incorporates information from industry experts.

What is secondary data?

identify the problembetter define the problem

develop an approach to the problemformulate an appropriate research design.

It can also…

answer certain research questionshelp to interpret primary data more insightfully

Evaluating secondary data

Not all secondary is 100% reliable. I mean would you believe everything

you read on the net?

Apparently according to some guy on the internet

I have been left over US$4 million by a Prince and all I have to do is give him my

bank account number and passwords!

Evaluating secondary dataSecondary data needs to be evaluated on the:

• methodology used to collect the data• accuracy of the data• currency of the data• objectivity of the data• content of the data• dependability of the data

Evaluation is required to ensure that its use does not weaken the objectivity, accuracy,

and credibility of your research.

Example of secondary dataDance Manifesto was a document produced by Dance UK that undertook a 6 month consultation and research process that

identified the following;

Dance to be supported and developed as an art form· Dance to be an integral part of every young person’s

education· Dance to be available and affordable for everyone to

watch and participate in· Dance to be a sustainable career with world class training

What types of research problems might this data help inform or explain?

Primary researchPrimary research is information collected directly by the researcher and is gathered to address the problem at hand. This includes instruments such as surveys, interviews and focus groups and observation

exercise 2Pair off with someone different

In 100 words or less explain your topic idea to each other

On a sheet of paper, draw two columns like thisPrimary Secondary

List some ideas of some primary and secondary sources of data that you might use to inform your problem or topic

Types of research approaches

All information is not made the same way. Information can be represented, explained

or expressed in different forms and therefore used for different purposes

quantitative and qualitative

Researchers need different types of data to solve different types of problems.

Qualitative research

The purpose of qualitative research is to gain insights from participants about their feelings and motivations. This form of data results from an attempt to specify the quality of the relationship

between two or more things.

Key words: emotions, attitudes, reactions and beliefs.

Quantitative research

Quantitative research involves interviewing a large number of people in an attempt to quantify the relationship between two or more things

Key words: numerical measurements, percentages, proportions, graphs, charts and statistics.

Horses for coursesYou need to undertake different types of

research in order to solve different research problems or questions

Exploratory research

Exploratory research helps the researcher develop an understanding of the problem. It is often used in the initial stages of the research. Exploratory research can be used to;

• develop a focus and direction for conclusive research• uncover problems and identify variables that need to be measured

• help formulate a hypothesis or an educated guess about the outcome of a test• designed to answer a research question

• provide detail to evaluate alternative courses of action• test hypotheses and examine relationships between variables

you have already done some exploratory research about your topic!

What you know?What you don’t know?

Have you read any articles, surfed the net or blogged about and got comments?

Descriptive research Descriptive research describes

the behaviour of phenomena in a research problem. Student

competence, satisfaction, likes and dislikes, improvement.

Generally, descriptive research answers the questions who,

what, when, where and how. Descriptive research has a clear

statement of the research problem and details exactly

what is to be measured.

Causal researchCausal research describes the relationship between two or

more variables. It gathers evidence regarding cause and

effect relationships. For example, studies on the effectiveness of advertising might look at how

changes in attitudes or awareness affect sales. At a

more simple level it answers the question why?

You have to be able to measure how accurate,

appropriate and reliable your research is…

Can people spend money on the basis of it?

Would you risk your job because of it?

Would you risk your life on the basis of your findings?

Would you trust the findings?

Research is not a perfect process

Validity and reliabilityValidity and reliability are two terms that are often associated with research. The aim of these two measurements or tests

is to determine how useful our research is.

How accurate a picture are we are getting from our data?

Are the conclusions we make applicable to everyone or simply the group of people we have studied?

Can our research be repeated by others and would they get

similar results if they did repeat our research?

ValidityValidity is when the research

measures what it is supposed to measure and is free from bias.

Does the research truly represent what is happening in the real

world, does it represent practices that are applicable to yours and

others work example: I might want to compare

the rates of pay for performers in the UK from now and 20 years

ago..what might some of the factors that might impact on validity?

Reliability

Reliability is when the results the research gives are consistent and free from random error. That is, if you repeated the study you

would most likely get the same results.

example: I have a chat with this group of people about the future of dance

education in the western world…what might some of the impacts on reliability?

One final noteIt is usually impossible to collect data from everyone concerned with a problem.

There might be too many of them, they might refuse to participate, they might be located all around the world or you might simply have no way to contact them or

even know they exist

We solve this problem by a process called samplingA sample can be designed to ‘represent’ a small slice of the entire population

The aim is to ensure validity and reliability in that the information you gain from your sample can be applied or is similar to the information you would gain from

the everyone

we will talk a lot more about this in later sessions