Research Tip#15: Writing your Thesis- Chapter on Research Design

The research design chapter often follows the review chapter.
It generally focuses on the methodology that you have adopted for the study.
There is no fixed pattern for this chapter. But it is important to keep in mind
that research design is broader than the methodology you have adopted. Besides
the tools used for data collection, it will include details of the sample,
process of sampling, tool development, process of validation of the tool, data
collection process and maybe even the framework of writing and analysis that
you would follow in the subsequent chapters. Leaving aside ethnographies, this
chapter is also likely to include details of the context or field, and
navigating it, particularly in qualitative studies.

If you study the doctoral theses in your university that have
been accepted in the past two decades, you would be able to arrive at the
expectations from the chapter. In Social Sciences, the past two decades have
seen a global trend towards writing succinctly. Traditional theses that
focussed on writing long, unwieldy chapters that provided length (and
thickness) to the thesis have given way to writing concisely. Thus, unlike earlier,
you may not need to write explanations of what a research design is or
techniques of sampling are. Instead, you will focus on spelling out what you
are doing and why are you doing it. Another shift in trend is towards doing away
with the need of labelling. It is no longer mandatory, in most places, to
specify the exact method that you have used. Most theses rely on an approach,
which has to be rationally chosen and internally consistent. For instance, when
saying that you have undertaken case based research is sufficient instead of
specifying whether it is a case study, a case profile, a vignette, or story. In
short, greater focus is on the justification of your approach to research
rather than on presenting your conceptual understanding of different research
methods.

The key to writing this chapter is not collecting a bunch of
topics that need to be addressed about the research. Yes the methodology and
the sample have to be described. But in contemporary researches, the trend is
also more towards justifying why you have chosen to work in a particular way.
For instance, you chose to undertake a survey of 500 participants. You will
need to justify how this sample was representative of the total population,
what permutations and combinations were kept in mind when choosing this sample,
and how did you ensure that your sample selection was not biased. Similarly, in
a descriptive study with small sample, the choice of ten participants instead
of eight or twelve will have to be justified.

A similar line of argument will have to be followed for the
choice of research design apart from sampling. Why did you choose to undertake
a quantitative rather than a qualitative study or a mixed methods approach? Ideally
the choice of design would emanate from the nature of your research questions.
It would be difficult to justify a survey for a study that focuses on questions
about studying a context in depth, or documenting emotions or experiences. At the
same time, it would be difficult to arrive at generalisations from a
qualitative study. The justification for your design would thus be in
continuation of the research questions you would have hopefully spelt out in
chapters one and/or two.

Like always, ending with a word of caution, discuss your chapter
structure with your supervisor and read the works of others, before you
finalise what you wish to write.