Aligning Your Research Question and Design

Now that you’re familiar with the components of research design, let’s discuss how to make decisions for your own study. As with most things in research, your choice of design depends on your research question. The question is what you want to find out; the design is how you plan to go about finding it.

Research designs are flexible and can be tailored to your specific study. That said, certain types of research questions often go along with certain types of designs or methods. A great way to get familiar with what this looks like in practice is to read the Methods sections of scholarly articles on your topic. Look at how participants are recruited, what kinds of tools are used to measure key variables, what the data collection process looks like, and how the data are analyzed. The more research you read, the more you’ll start to notice patterns.

For example:

• If your question is something like “How do parents of children with autism experience support services?”, you’re interested in people’s lived experiences. That would likely call for a qualitative design. Studies like this often use interviews or focus groups and analyze the responses by identifying themes and patterns.

• If your question is “What is the relationship between screen time and academic performance in high school students?”, you’re probably looking at a quantitative, non-experimental study. Researchers might collect survey data about screen time and GPA, then run statistical tests to see if the two are related.

• If your question is “Does participating in a mindfulness program reduce stress levels in college students?”, you’re asking about cause and effect. That would require an experimental design, where participants are randomly assigned to either a mindfulness group or a control group, and their stress levels are measured before and after the program.

In all of these examples, the design lines up with the question being asked. That’s the goal. Your sampling, measurement, data collection, and analysis should all make sense together and help you answer the question clearly. Looking at how other researchers have done this in your field is one of the best ways to get ideas and learn what works.

If your research question and design  aren’t in sync, the study can end up being confusing or might not actually answer what you set out to explore.

Practical Considerations

Another important part of being a researcher is learning how to make practical decisions about your study design. For example, as you think about your own project, you might imagine that one data collection strategy seems easier to accomplish than another. As a researcher, you have to choose a research design that makes sense for your question and that is feasible to complete with the resources you have. All research projects require some resources to accomplish. Make sure your design is one you can carry out with the resources (time, money, staff, etc.) that you have. Even advanced researchers must sometimes consider their own limitations – a researcher trained in qualitative methods might not be equipped to carry out a complex experimental study. In that case, the researcher would need to either find a fellow researcher with qualitative expertise, or choose to approach their research question from a slightly different angle. Ideally, you should choose a research design that matches your research question, and not the other way around. However, it’s also important to consider your strengths as a researcher and your constraints (such as whether you have time to learn the techniques you want to use).