Friday, 22 June 2018

EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

RESEARCH DESIGN

Name: Naurah Nabilah Sya'bani Padmasedhana

Introduction
The discipline of design is relatively young, but has rapidly matured in recent decades. This is evidenced by an increase in the number of design journals and dedicated design conferences since the late 1980s, and by an increase in the amount of attention being paid to design in journals from other academic fields like innovation and marketing.
As the body of design research develops and expands, it is interesting to examine the publication patterns of institutions and researchers publishing in the field of design. In other research fields, studies providing rankings of schools and scholars on the basis of the number of papers published and the citations of these papers are relatively common. In this paper we also recognize the performance of those universities and scholars that have made a significant contribution to the academic development of the design discipline. Another major aim for this paper is to provide insight into the publication patterns of leading institutions and scholars.
A recent study provided a list of 14 journals considered to be leading in industrial design research. When examining the nature of these 14 journals, a distinction can be made between so – called design – relevant journals and design – focused journals. Design – relevant journals focus on a disciplinary area such as ergonomics or human – computer interaction. Design researchers use insights from these fields in their design research and contribute to these fields when publishing their work in these journals. However, if design research is understood to focus on the development of and human interaction with products and services, as in Gemser et al,’s study, some of the papers being published in these design – relevant journals cannot really be called design research – even though they do cover a broad spectrum of design aspects.
A research design according to Andrew B. Kirumbi (2018) is the set of methods and procedures used in collecting and analyzing measures of the variables specified in the research problem research. The design of a study defines the study type (descriptive, correlation, semi – experimental, experimental, review, meta – analytic) and sub – type (e.g., descriptive – longitudinal case study), research problem, hypotheses, independent and dependent variables, experimental design and if applicable, data collection methods and a statistical analysis plan. Research design is the framework that has been created to find answers to research questions.
Before start the hypotheses, must develop a research design to use when collecting, analyzing and interpreting observations and data. A research design is a plan specifying how you intend to fulfill the goals of the study. It it’s a rational plan of verification that guides through the various stages of the research. Research designs are important because complete designs tend to produce significant and correct conclusions. They contribute to the systematic observation of the research question or problem.
After having decided on a qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods approach and after conducting a preliminary literature review and deciding on a format for a proposal, the next step in the process is to designing an introduction to a proposal. This chapter discusses the composition and   writing of a scholarly introduction and examines the deficiencies in writing an introduction for these three different types of designs. Then the discussion turns to the five components of writing a good introduction: a) establishing the problem leading to the study, b) reviewing the literature about the problem, c) identifying deficiencies in the literature about the problem, c) identifying the purpose of the noting the significance of the problem for this audience and e) identifying the purpose of the proposed study. These components comprise a social science deficiency model of writing an introduction, because a major component of the introduction is to set forth the deficiencies in past research. To illustrate this model, a complete introduction in a published research study is presented and analyzed.

Process
Designing theorizing can draw from the same development process as for behavioral sciences are used to justify the proposition of deign – related hypotheses. Design – specific aspects such as artifact mutability require special attention.

Background of Study
The research design serves several purposes. First, it suggests the necessary observations you need to make to provide answers to the research question. It outlines the ways you should make your observations. Second, the research design identifies the analytical and statistical procedures you will need to use when analyzing the data. A major purpose of research is to establish that the independent and dependent variables are casually related. The research design consists of four components necessary to establish this purpose: comparison, manipulation, control and the ability to generalize findings (Frankfort – Nachmlas and Nachmlas 2000, 88). As we discuss in later chapters, the research design also specifies a model you can use to test the validity and significance of the statistical relationships.

Research Finding
Types of Research Designs
The research design refers to the overall strategy that you choose to integrate the different components of the study in a coherent and logical way, thereby, ensuring it will effectively address the research problem; it constitutes the blueprint for the collection, measurement and analysis of data. Note that your research problem determines the type of design you should use, not the other way around.
1.      Choosing a Research Problem
A research problem is the main organizing principle guiding the analysis for the paper. The problem under investigation offers us an occasion for writing and a focus that governs what we want to say. It represents the core subject matter of scholarly communication and the means by which we arrives at other topics of conversations and the discovery of new knowledge and understanding.
2.      Preparing to Write
After determined the type of research design you will use, but before you sit down and begin to organize your paper, there are few things you should consider doing that will help make the process of writing go much smoother; make a schedule and analyze the assignment.
3.      The Abstract
An abstract summarizes, usually in one paragraph of 300 words or less, the major aspects of the entire paper in a prescribed sequence that includes: 1) the overall purpose of the study and the research problem(s) you investigated, 2) the basic design of the study, 3) major findings or trends found as a result of your analysis and 4) a brief summary of your interpretations and conclusions.
4.      The Introduction
The introduction leads the reader from a general subject area to a particular topic of inquiry. It establishes the scope, context and significance of the purpose of the work in the form of the research being conducted by summarizing current understanding and background information about the topic, stating the purpose of the work in the form of the research problem supported by a hypothesis or a set of questions, explaining briefly the methodological approach used to examines the research problem, highlighting the potential outcomes your study can reveal and outlining the remaining structure and organization of the paper.
5.      The Literature Review
A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles and any other sources relevant to a particular issues, area of research or theory and by so doing, provides a descriptions, summary and crititcal evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.
6.      Methodology
The methodology section of research paper answers two main questions: How was the data collected or generated? The writing should be direct and precise and always written in the past tense.
7.      The Results
The results section is where you report the findings of your study based upon the methodology for methodological you applied to gather information. The results section should state the findings of the research arranged in a logical sequence without bias or interpretation.
8.      The Discussion
The discussion will always connect to the introduction by way of the research questions or hypotheses you posed and the literature you reviewed, but it does not simply repeat or rearrange the introduction; the discussion should always explain how your study has moved the reader’s understanding of the research problem forward from where you left them at the end of the introduction.
9.      The Conclusion
The conclusion is intended to help the reader understand why your research should matter to them after they have finished reading the paper. A conclusion is not merely a summary of the main topics covered or a re – statement of your research problem, but a synthesis of key points and if applicable where you recommend new areas for future research.
10.  Proofreading Your Paper
The act of searching for errors before you hand in your final research paper. Errors can be both grammatical and typographical in nature, but also include identifying problems with the narrative flow of your paper [i.e. the logical sequence of thoughts and ideas], problems with concise writing and finding any word processing errors [e.g. different font types, intended paragraphs, line spacing, uneven margins, etc].

Research Methodology
There are three kinds of methodology researchers could use. Qualitative, quantitative or even mixed methods. The qualitative methodology is used to explore the understanding about the research. A case study can be referred to an individual, a small group, an organization, community, or even a country (Punch, 2005; Richards, 2011). Merriam (1998, p. 3) also states that a case study can be defined as the “methods and techniques most suitable for collecting and analyzing the data”.

Conclusion
Research design is not related to any particular method of collecting data or any particular type of data. Any research design can, in principle, use any type of data collection method and can use either quantitative or qualitative data. Research design refers to the structure of an enquiry: it is a logical matter rather than a logistical one. It has been argued that the central role of research design is to minimize the chance of drawing incorrect casual inferences from data. Design is a logical task undertaken to ensure that the evidence collected enable us to answer questions or to test theories as unambiguously as possible. When designing research it is essential that we identify the type of evidence required to answer the research question in a convincing way. This means that we must not simply collect evidence that is consistent with particular theory or explanation. Research needs to be structured in such a way that the evidence also bears on alternative rival explanations and enables us to identify which one of the competing explanations is most compelling empirically. It also means that we must not simply look for evidence that support our favorite theory: we should also look for evidence that has the potential to disprove our preferred explanations.

References
Cresswell, John W (2014). RESEARCH DESIGN: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approach. Los Angeles: SAGE
“WHAT IS RESEARCH DESIGN?”
 “RESEARCH DESIGN”
Gemser, Gerda and Cees de Bont (2016) “DESIGN – RELATED AND DESIGN – FOCUSED RESEARCH: A STUDY OF PUBLICATION PATTERNS IN DESIGN JOURNALS”
Rowley, Jenny (2014) “DESIGNING AND USING RESEARCH QUESTIONNARIES”
Trochim, William M. K (2006)  “WRITING GUIDES: RESEARCH DESIGN”
“RESEARCH DESIGN”
From http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_design accessed on June 20th 2018
Biber, Sharlene Hesse “INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY”. From http://tandfoline.com/loi/tsrm20 accessed on June 20th 2018
Hadi, Muhamad Sofian “THE USE OF COMMUNICATE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT) IN ENGLISH DEPARTMENT MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY OF JAKARTA: A CASE STUDY”. From
http://www.academia.edu/36326203/THE_USE_OF_COMMUNICATE_LANGUAGE_TEACHING_CLT_ accessed on June 23rd 2018



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