CHAPTER FOUR

RESEARCH DESIGN (PLANNING OF RESEARCH PROJECT)

4.1. Meaning of Research Design
The nature and appropriateness of a research design for a given research determines the success or
failure of that research. It is obvious that an engineer does not construct a building without having a
well refined architecture or engineering drawing. The same is true for a researcher. We need to have a
predetermined research design before starting the process of collecting and analyzing data.

A research design is a master plan specifying the methods and procedures for collecting and analyzing
the data. It constitutes the blueprint for the collection, measurement and analysis of data. As such the
design includes an outline of what the researcher will do from writing the hypothesis and its operational
implications to the final analysis of data. Decisions regarding what, where, when, how much, by what
means concerning an inquiry or a research study constitute a research design.
3.2. Features of Research Design
From what has been stated above, we can state the important features of a research design as under:
(i) It is a plan that specifies the sources and types of information relevant to the research problem.
(ii) It is a strategy specifying which approach will be used for gathering and analyzing the data.
(iii) It also includes the time and cost budgets
In brief, research design must, at least, contain—(a) a clear statement of the research problem; (b)
procedures and techniques to be used for gathering information; (c) the population to be studied; and
(d) methods to be used in processing and analyzing data.
3.3. Important Concepts Concerning Research Design
The preparation of a research design requires the understanding of the following concepts.
 Variable
A variable is anything that can take on differing or varying values. The values can differ at various
times for the same object or person, or at the same time for different objects or persons.
Examples of variables are production units, absenteeism, and motivation.
Types of variables
(i) The dependent variable
(ii) The independent variable
(iii) Extraneous Variable.
(i) Dependent variable (also known as the criterion variable)

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The dependent variable is the variable of primary interest to the researcher. The researcher's goal is to
understand and describe the dependent variable, or to explain its variability, or predict it. In other
words, it is the main variable that lends itself for investigation as a viable factor. Through the analysis
of the dependent variable (i.e., finding what variables influence it), it is possible to find answers or
solutions to the problem.
If one variable depends upon or is consequence of the other variable, it is termed as a dependent
variable.
(ii) Independent variable (also known as the predictor variable)
It is generally conjectured that an independent variable is one that influences the dependent variable in either a
positive or negative way. That is, when the independent variable is present, the dependent variable is also
present, and with each unit of increase in the independent variable, there is an increase or decrease in the
dependent variable. In other words, the variance in the dependent variable is accounted for by the
independent variable.
To establish that a change in the independent variable causes a change in the dependent variable, all four of
the following conditions should be met:
1. The independent and the dependent variable should co-vary: in other words, a change in the
dependent variable should be associated with a change in the independent variable.
2. The independent variable (the presumed causal factor) should precede the dependent variable. In
other words, there must be a time sequence in which the two occur: the cause must occur before the
effect.
3. No other factor should be a possible cause of the change in the dependent variable. Hence, the
researcher should control for the effects of other variables.
4. A logical explanation (a theory) is needed about why the independent variable affects the dependent
variable.
(iii) . Extraneous Variable
A variable, which interferes the effect of the relationship between the dependent and an independent
variable is called extraneous or intervening variable. It is an independent variable that is not related to
the purpose of the study, but may affect the dependent variable in some way. Suppose the researcher
wants to test the hypothesis that there is a relationship between children’s gains in social studies
achievement and their self-concepts. In this case self-concept is an independent variable and social
studies achievement is a dependent variable. Intelligence may as well affect the social studies

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achievement, but since it is not related to the purpose of the study undertaken by the researcher, it will
be termed as an extraneous variable. Similarly, in the study of the effect of socio-economic
background of a student’s family on learning, the variables such as IQ, age, school, and other facilities
may act as intervening variables.
Whatever effect is noticed on dependent variable as a result of extraneous variables is technically
described as an ‘experimental error’. A study must always be so designed that the effect upon the
dependent variable is attributed entirely to the independent variables(s), and not to some extraneous
variable (s).
 Control: In experimental researches, when we design the study minimizing the influence of
extraneous independent variables, which is termed as „control‟. Control is important characteristic
of a good research.
 Confounded relationship:- When the dependent variable is not free from the influence of extraneous
variable(s), the relationship between the dependent and independent variables is said to be
confounded by an extraneous variable (s).
 Experimental and non-experimental hypothesis-testing research: - When the purpose of research is
to test a research hypothesis; it is termed as hypothesis-testing research. It can be of the
experimental design or of the non-experimental design. Research in which the independent variable
is manipulated is termed ‘experimental hypothesis-testing research’ and a research in which an
independent variable is not manipulated is called ‘a non experimental hypothesis-testing research.’

For instance, suppose a researcher wants to study whether intelligence affects reading ability for a
group of students and for this purpose he randomly selects 50 students and tests their intelligence
and reading ability by calculating the coefficient of correlation between the two sets of scores. This
is an example of non-experimental hypothesis-testing research because herein the independent
variable, intelligence, is not manipulated. But now suppose that researcher randomly select 50
students from a group of students who are to take a course in statistics and then divides them into
two groups by randomly assigning 25 to Group A, the usual studies program, and 25 to Group B,
the special studies program. At the end of the course, he administers a test to each group in order to
judge the effectiveness of the training program on the student’s performance level. This is an
experimental hypothesis-testing research because in this case the independent variable, viz., the
type –training program, is manipulated.

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 Experimental and control groups:- In an experimental hypothesis-testing research when a group is
exposed to usual conditions, it is termed as ‘Control group’, but when the group is exposed to some
novel or special condition, it is termed an ‘experimental group.’ In the above illustration, the Group
A can be called a control group and Group B an experimental group. If both groups A and B were
exposed to special programs, then both groups would be termed ‘experimental groups’.
 Treatments: - The different conditions under which experimental and control groups are put are
usually referred to as ‘treatments’. In the illustration taken above, the two treatments are the usual
studies program and the special studies program. Similarly, if we want to determine through an
experiment the comparative impact of three varieties of fertilizers on the yield of wheat, in that case
the three varieties of fertilizer will be considered as three treatments
4.4. Forms of Research Design/ classification of research design

Research Design can be classified into different groups based on different criteria
1. Purpose of the Study
From the perspective of purpose of the study, a research can be exploratory, descriptive, and
explanatory
A. Exploratory research studies-
An exploratory study is undertaken when not much is known about the situation at hand, or no
information is available on how similar problems or research issues have been solved in the past. In
such cases, extensive preliminary work needs to be done to gain familiarity with the phenomena in the
situation, and understand what is occurring, before we develop a model and set up a rigorous design for
comprehensive investigation.
In sum, exploratory studies are important for obtaining a good grasp of the phenomenon of interest and
advancing knowledge through subsequent theory building and hypothesis testing.
Uses of Exploratory Research
Formulate a problem or define a problem more precisely
Identify alternative courses of action
Develop hypotheses
Isolate key variables and relationships for further examination
Gain insights for developing an approach to the problem
Establish priorities for further research

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 For exploratory research, the researcher may use different sources for getting information like (1)
experience surveys, (2) secondary data analysis, (3) case studies, and (4) pilot studies.
i. secondary data analysis/ The survey of concerning literature

The most simple and fruitful method of formulating precisely the research problem or developing
hypothesis is secondary data analysis. Hypotheses stated by earlier workers may be reviewed and their
usefulness be evaluated as a basis for further research. It may also be considered whether the already
stated hypotheses suggest new hypothesis. In this way the researcher should review and build upon the
work already done by others, but in cases where hypotheses have not yet been formulated, his task is to
review the available material for deriving the relevant hypotheses from it. Besides, the bibliographical
survey of studies, already made in one’s area of interest may as well as made by the researcher for
precisely formulating the problem.
ii. Experience survey- means the survey of people who have had practical experience with the
problem to be studied. The object of such a survey is to obtain insight into the relationships between
variables and new ideas relating to the research problem. For such a survey people who are competent and
can contribute new ideas may be carefully selected as respondents to ensure a representation of different
types of experience.
Iii. Focus group research - is a type of research that involves bringing in a small group of subjects
(typically 6 to 10 people) at one location, and having them discuss a research problem of interest for a
period of 1.5 to 2 hours. The discussion is moderated and led by a trained facilitator, who sets the
agenda and an initial set of questions for participants.
B. Descriptive research
Is undertaken in order to ascertain and be able to describe the characteristics of the variables of interest in a
situation. Sets out to describe and to interpret what is. It looks at individuals, groups, institutions,
methods and materials in order to describe, compare, contrast, classify, analyze and interpret the
entities and the events that constitute the various fields of inquiry.
The goal of a descriptive study, therefore, is to offer to the researcher a profile or to describe relevant aspects
of the phenomenon of interest from an individual, organizational, industry-oriented, or other perspective.
Descriptive studies that present data in a meaningful form thus help to:
1. Understand the characteristics of a group in a given situation.
2. Think systematically about aspects in a given situation.
3. Offer ideas for further probe and research.

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 4. Help make certain simple decisions (such as how many and what kinds of individuals should be
transferred from one department to another).
The methods that come under descriptive research are: Surveys, Correlation studies, Observation
studies
Correlation Studies - Correlational studies trace relationships among two or more variables in order to
gain greater situational insight. We may wish to know, for example, whether there is relationship
between sex and choice of field of study; whether criminal behavior is related to social class
background;
The purpose of correlational studies is not to establish cause-effect relationship among variables but to
determine whether the variables under study have some kind of association or not. Variables being
studied may have positive or negative relationship or they may not have relationship at all.
Observation Studies
There are many instances where we may be interested in a behavior that occurs in its natural
environment. In such situation we conduct observation studies. What is observation study? Observation
studies, as their name implies, involve observing and recording of behavior or trait or attribute as it
occurs in its natural settings.
C. Explanatory Research
When we encounter an issue that is already known and have a description of it, we might begin to
wonder why things are the way they are. The desire to know "why," to explain, is the purpose of
explanatory research. It is a continuation of descriptive research and builds on exploratory and
descriptive research and goes on to identify the reasons for something that occurs. The researcher goes
beyond merely describing the characteristics, to analyze and explain why or how something is
happening. Thus, explanatory or analytical research aims to understand phenomena by discovering and
measuring causal relations among them. That is, explanatory research looks for causes and reasons. For
example, it is one thing to describe the crime rate in a country, to examine trends over time or to
compare the rates in different countries. It is quite a different thing to develop explanations about why
the crime rate is as high as it is why some types of crime are increasing or why the rate is higher in
some countries than in others.

2. Time horizon: (Cross-Sectional & Longitudinal Studies)

a) Cross-Sectional Studies - A study can be undertaken in which data are gathered just once, perhaps over a
period of days or weeks or months, in order to answer a research question. Such studies are called one-shot

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 (snapshot) or cross-sectional studies. Cross sectional research is usually the simplest and least costly
alternative. Its disadvantage is that it cannot capture the change processes.
b) Longitudinal Studies - In some cases, however, the researcher might want to study people or phenomena at
more than one point in time in order to answer the research question. The advantage of longitudinal studies
is that it can track changes over time. For instance, the researcher might want to study employees' behavior
before and after a change in the top management, so as to know what effects the change accomplished. Here,
because data are gathered at two different points in time, the study is not cross-sectional or of the one-shot
kind, but is carried longitudinally across a period of time. Such studies, as when data on the dependent
variable are gathered at two or more points in time to answer the research question, are called longitudinal
studies.
There are three types of longitudinal research: time series, panel, and cohort.
i.Time series research is longitudinal study in which the same type of information is collected on a
group of people or other units across multiple time periods. Researcher can observe stability or
change in the features of the units or can track conditions overtime. One could track the
characteristics of students registering in the course on Research Methods over a period of four years
i.e. the characteristics (Total, age characteristics, gender distribution, subject distribution, and
geographic distribution). Such an analysis could tell us the trends in the characteristic over the four
years.
ii. The panel study is a powerful type of longitudinal research. In panel study, the researcher observes
exactly the same people, group, or organization across time periods. It is a difficult to carry out such
study. Tracking people over time is often difficult because some people die or cannot be located.
Nevertheless, the results of a well-designed panel study are very valuable.
iii.A cohort analysis is similar to the panel study, but rather than observing the exact same people, a
category of people who share a similar life experience in a specified time period is studied. The
focus is on the cohort, or category, not on specific individuals. Commonly used cohorts include all
people born in the same year (called birth cohorts), all people hired at the same time, all people retire
on one or two year time frame, and all people who graduate in a given year. Unlike panel studies,
researchers do not have to locate the exact same people for cohort studies. The only need to identify
those who experienced a common life event.
3. Researcher Control of Variables (experimental and ex post facto design)

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In terms of researcher’s ability to manipulate variables, we can differentiate between experimental and
ex post facto design. In an experiment, the researcher attempts to control and/or manipulate the
variables in the study. It is enough that we can cause variables to be changed or held constant in
keeping with our research objectives.
In this design, one or more independent variables are manipulated by the researcher (as treatments),
subjects are randomly assigned to different treatment levels (random assignment), and the results of the
treatments on outcomes (dependent variables) are observed.
Experimental studies can be contrived (i.e., artificial) and non-contrived (i.e., natural environments
where events normally occur). Contrived settings (Laboratory experiments) are conducted away from
where the phenomenon is usually found and the researcher attempts to control as many extraneous
influences as he or she can in that setting. In other words, contrived settings offer the highest level
researcher interference.
Non-contrived settings are typically field studies where variables are allowed to operate as they would
normally, such as correlational field studies, and case studies conducted in organizations.
In field experiments, there is researcher interference, but this occurs in less contrived settings than
laboratory experiments.
Laboratory experiments, conducted in laboratory (artificial) settings, tend to be high in internal validity
(causality) due to its ability to link cause and effect through treatment manipulation, while controlling
for the spurious/ deceive effect of extraneous variable, but this comes at the cost of low external
validity (generalizability), because the artificial (laboratory) setting in which the study is conducted
may not reflect the real world. Field experiments, conducted in field settings such as in a real
organization tend to be stronger in external validity (generalizability).

Correlational studies done in organizations are called field studies. Studies conducted to establish cause-
and-effect relationships using the same natural environment in which employees normally function are
called field experiments.

With an ex post facto design, investigators have no control over the variables in the sense of being able
to manipulate them. They can only report what has happened or what is happening. Ex post facto
research is a method of teasing out possible antecedents of events that have happened and cannot,
therefore, be engineered or manipulated by the investigator. Ex post facto- refers to those studies which

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 investigate possible cause-and-effect relationships by observing an existing condition or state of affairs
and searching back in time for plausible causal factors. I f a researcher is interested in investigating the
reasons why fatal traffic accident is increasing in Ethiopia, he/she cannot do it by randomly assigning
research participants into experimental and control group. There is no way in which a researcher can
study the actual accidents because they have happened. What a researcher can do, however, is to
attempt to reconstruct the causal link by studying the statistics, examining the accident spots, and
taking note of the statements given by victims and witnesses. This means that a researcher is studying
the independent variable or variables in retrospect for their possible relationship to, and effects on, the
dependent variable or variables.

Basic Principles of Experimental Designs

Professor Fisher, who is usually called the father of experimental design, has enumerated three
principles of experimental designs: (1) The principle of Replication, (2) Randomization, and (3)
Local Control.
1. The Principle of Replication: - This principle refers to the repletion of the experiment more than once.
Therefore, each treatment is applied in many experimental units instead of one. This, in turn, helps to
increase the statistical accuracy of the experiments. The following example intends to illustrate the
principle of replication in detail.
Suppose we are to examine the effect of two varieties of rice on production. For this purpose we may
divide the field into two parts and grow one variety in one part and the other variety in the other part.
We can then compare the yield of the two parts and draw conclusion on that basis. But if we are to
apply the principle of replication to this experiment, then we first divide the field into several parts,
grow one variety in half of these parts and the other variety in the remaining parts. We can then collect
the data of yield the two varieties and draw conclusion by comparing the same. The result so obtained
will be more reliable in comparison to the conclusion we draw without applying the principle of
replication. The entire experiment can even be repeated several times for better results.
2. The Principle of Randomization:- Conduction of experiment under this principle provides protection
against the effects of extraneous factors by randomizing. In other words, this principle indicates that
we should design or plan the experiment in such a way that the variations caused by extraneous factors
can all be combined under the general heading of “Chance.”
For example, if we grow one variety of rice, say, in the first half of the parts of field and the other
variety is grown in the other half, then it is just possible that the soil fertility may be different in the first

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 half compared to the other half. This makes our results unrealistic. In such a situation, we may assign
the variety of rice to be grown in different part of the field on the basis of some random sampling
technique, i.e., we may apply randomization principle and protect ourselves against the effect of the
extraneous factors (soil fertility differences in the give case.) As such, through the application of the
principle of randomization, we can have a better estimate of the experimental error.
3. The principle of Local Control:- Under this principle, the extraneous factor, the known source of
variability, is made to vary deliberately over as wide a range as necessary and this needs to be done in
such a way that the variability it causes can be measured and hence eliminated from the experimental
error. This means that we should plan the experiment in a manner that we can perform a two-way
analysis of variance (ANOVA), in which the total variability of the data is divided into three
components attributed to treatments (varieties of rice in our case), the extraneous factor (soil fertility in
our case), and experimental error. In other words, according to the principle of local control, we first
divide the field into several homogeneous parts, known as blocks, and then each such block is divided
into parts equal to the number of treatments. Then the treatments are randomly assigned to these parts
of a block. Blocks are the levels at which we hold an extraneous factor fixed, so that we can measure
its contribution to the total variability of the data by means of a two-way analysis of variance. In short,
through the principle of local control we can eliminate the variability due to extraneous factor(s) from
the experimental error.
4.5. Case study design
A case study is an in-depth, detailed investigation of a single instance or one setting, although more
than one case at a time may be conducted.
It is an in-depth, empirical investigation of a single instance or setting to explain the processes of a
phenomenon in context. A case can be persons, groups, organizations, or non-human objects (e.g.,
products, policies, or programs) depending on what the program evaluators want to examine through
in-depth analysis and comparison.
Data may be collected using a combination of interviews, personal observations, and internal or
external documents. Case studies can be either single or multiple-case designs.

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