CHAPTER FOUR

RESEARCH DESIGN
 Meaning of Research Design
According to Miller “Research design is the planned
sequence of the entire process involved in conducting a
research study”.

Research design is a comprehensive plan of the sequence

of operations that a researcher intends to carry out to
achieve the research objectives.

“Research design is the plan and structure of investigation

so as to obtain answers to research questions.
 Cont’d
The type of research design chosen depends on:
 the type of problem;
 the knowledge already available about the problem;
and
 the resources available for the study.
The important features of a research design
i. A plan: specifies the sources & types of information
relevant to the research problem
ii. A strategy: which approach will be used for gathering
and analyzing the data.
iii. The time and cost budgets: most studies are done
under these two constraints
 Essentials of Research Design
oIt is an activity and time based plan.
oIt is always based on the research questions.
oIt guides the selection of sources and types of
information.
oIt is a framework for specifying the relationships
among the study variables.
oIt outlines procedures for every research activity.
 Cont’d

Research design must, at least, contain:

A clear statement of the research problem;
Procedures and techniques to be used for
gathering information;
The population to be studied;
 Methods to be used in processing and
analyzing data
 Classification of Research Design
• A Descriptive Research is a type of conclusive
research that has as its major objective the description
of something-usually market characteristics or
functions.
• Provides answers to questions such as who, what,
where, when and how, as they are related to the
research problem.
• Typically, answers to these questions, are found in
secondary data or by conducting surveys.

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Descriptive research is conducted for the following
reasons:
• To describe the characteristics’ of relevant groups,
such as consumers, salespeople, organisations, or
market areas. For example we can develop a profile of
the “heavy users” (frequent shoppers) of prestigious
department stores.
• To estimate the percentage of units in a specified
population exhibiting a certain behaviour. For
example, we might be interested in estimating the
percentage of heavy users of prestigious department
stores who also patronize discount department stores.

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• To determine the perceptions of product
characteristics’. For example, how do
households perceive the various department
stores in terms of salient factors of the choice
criteria?
• To determine the degree to which marketing
variables are associated. For example, to what
extent is shopping at department stores related
to eating out?

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• To make specific predictions. For example,
what will be the retail sales of wow
international (a specific store) for fashion
clothing (specific product category) in Bole
area (specific region)?

• Descriptive Research can be further classified

into cross-sectional and longitudinal research.

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 …cont’d
i. Cross sectional studies (sample survey): are
carried at once and represent a snapshot of one
point in time. Various characteristics of the
elements or sample members are measured once.

ii. Longitudinal studies (time series analysis): are

repeated over an extended period. It can track
changes over time. In longitudinal studies of the
panel variety, the researcher may study the same
people over time.
Causal Research
• A type of research where the major objective is
to obtain evidence regarding cause –and effect
(causal) relationships.
• Causality may be thought of as understanding a
phenomenon in terms of conditional statements
in the form of “if X, then Y.”
• These,” if -then” statements become our way of
manipulating variables of interest.

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• If I spend more on advertising, then sales will
rise.
• Commercial managers are always trying to
determine what will cause a change in
consumer satisfaction, a gain in market share,
or an increase in sales.
• Our desire to understand our world in terms of
causal, if-then statements is very difficult, if not
impossible because there are formal conditions
that must be in place before a researcher can
attest to causality.
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Causal Research is Appropriate for the Following Purposes:

• To understand which variables is the cause

(independent variables) and which variables
are the effect (dependent variables) of a
phenomenon.
• To determine the nature of the relationship
between the causal variables and the effect to
be predicted.

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• Exploratory Research is most commonly
unstructured, informal research that is
undertaken to gain background information
about the general nature of the research
problem.
• By unstructured we mean that exploratory
research does not have a formalized set of
objectives, sample plan, or questionnaire.
• Exploratory research is aimed at gaining
additional information about a topic and
generating possible hypothesis to test.

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• Exploratory research is appropriate when the
problem needs to be defined more precisely ,
alternative courses of action identified ,
research questions or hypothesis
developed , and key variables isolated and
classified as dependent or independent.
 Types of variable

A variable can be classified in a number of ways but for

the sake of convinance, variable can be classified in to
two:
1. Dependent variable: The outcome of the change(s) brought
about by changes in an independent variable. it is thought to be
dependent on the independent variable

2. Independent variable: the cause supposed to be responsible

for bringing about change(s) in a phenomenon or situation. it is
the cause
Thank you……