UNIT 3

RESEARCH
DESIGN
What is Research Design?
A research design is the arrangement
of conditions for collection and
analysis of data in a manner that aims
to combine relevance to the
research purpose with economy in
procedure.

Research Design Constitutes Decisions

like:
What, Where, When, How, How much
• A research design is the framework
or plan for a study used as a guide in
collecting and analyzing data.
Need for Research Design:
• It facilitates the smooth flow of
various research processes.
• It would result in more accurate
results with minimum usage of time,
effort and money
Types of Research Designs:

There are three basic types of

research design:

Exploratory Descriptive Causal

• The goal of exploratory research is to
discover ideas and insights.

• Descriptive research is usually concerned

with describing a population with respect
to important variables.

• Causal research is used to establish

cause-and-effect relationships between
variables.
1 What is going on (descriptive research)?

2 Why is it going on (exploratory research)?

 Exploratory Design:
• Exploratory research is most commonly
unstructured, “informal” research
that is undertaken to gain background
information about the general nature
of the research problem.
• Exploratory research is usually
conducted when the researcher does
not know much about the problem and
needs additional information or desires
new or more recent information.
• There are two reasons for this:
(1)Exploratory research usually involves
only a relatively small group of people,

(2)these people are almost never

randomly selected to participate.
 Exploratory Design: Contd…

• Exploratory research is used in a

number of situations:
– To gain background information
– To define terms
– To clarify problems and
hypotheses
– To establish research priorities
 Exploratory Design: Contd…

A variety of methods are available to

conduct exploratory research:
• Secondary Data Analysis
• Experience Surveys/Depth Interviews
• Case Analysis
• Focus Groups
 Descriptive Design:
• Descriptive research is undertaken to
provide answers to questions of who, what,
where, when, and how – but not why.
• It is a research design in which the
major emphasis is on determining the
frequency with which something occurs or
the extent to which two variables cover.
 we use descriptive research for
the following purposes:
1. Major objective is to describe some thing
usually market characteristics or functions
2. To describe the characteristics of certain
groups.
3. To determine the proportion of people who
behave in a certain way.
4. To make specific predictions
5. To determine relationships between
variables
 sample survey
A sample survey offers a couple of big advantages over
panel designs. For one thing, you can target very
specific populations. Targeted recruitment is possible
with consumer panels, but only using the data that have
been collected about the participating individuals or
households. Here’s a second big advantage of sample
surveys: If you use a probability sampling plan, the
results from the sample can be projected to the overall
population. (Managers care more about populations than
they do samples.) On the downside, survey research is
expensive. It takes lots of time, energy, and money to
successfully collect and analyze survey data. And unless
you have the technical skills required for each aspect
of the process, you’ll have to hire others to help, adding
to the overall cost of the project.