Basic premise:

Academic investigations should be approached in a systematic way.

Before deciding on your research options, you need to work out a profile of the study to see what types of research approach or methods will
be most appropriate.

Consider secondary research options first.

Steps in the research process

A recommended sequence of steps to follow in the research process:

•Perceive a broad problem

•Read literature on relevant theoretical and empirical work (looking for way of narrowing the problem)

•Discuss with peers and tutor to define a researchable problem

•Define the context of the problem to be researched

•Review any comparable case studies, especially for research questions and methodology

•Frame research questions

•Design an investigative procedure

•Select and retrieve appropriate data

•Proceed with analysis and interpretation

•Compare your findings and interpretations with other relevant studies reviewed earlier

•Draw tentative conclusions re. your research questions or hypotheses

Secondary Research Options (field research)
There are a range of resources available for secondary research: the most well-known are:

•Published statistics: census, housing and social security data, and so on

•Published texts: theoretical work, secondary analyses by ‘experts’ and reports
•Media: documentaries for example, as a source of information
•Personal documents: diaries

Dunsmuir and Williams (1992) list the following advantages and disadvantages of secondary research:

Advantages
•Cheap and accessible - especially a University Library
•Often the only resource, for example historical documents
•Only way to examine large-scale trends

Disadvantages
•Lack of consistency of perspective
•Biases and inaccuracies cannot be checked
•Published statistics often raise more questions than they answer (for example, what does church attendance tell us about religious beliefs?)
•The concern over whether any data can be totally separated from the context of its collection
Primary Research Options (field research)
The most common primary research resources are:

•social surveys:
◦Questionnaire surveys
◦Interviews: informal or structured

•observation:
◦Participant (overt) or covert (masked identity)

Dunsmuir & Williams again, on advantages and disadvantages of Social Surveys:

Advantages

Quick and cheap if your sample is small

•Computer codable for quick analysis and repetition
•Coding enables multiple comparisons among variables
•Allows generalization to a larger population
•Verifiable by replication and re-questioning of interviewees/respondents

Disadvantages
Using a large sample can be time-consuming

•Over-reliance on computed (statistical) analysis loses individual meanings and case study data
•Closed questions may constrain the data (pre-empting a richer range of response)
•Respondents may interpret the questions differently. This makes comparison of the answers difficult
•Researchers can bias the data by concept definition and question framing
•It is impossible to check if people are responding honestly
•Response rate may be low and selection non-random. This affects the validity of any inferred generalisations
http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/report/resProc/research.htm