Research Methods: Developing your research design

Eira Patterson | View as single page | Feedback/Impact
Developing your research design
Evidence
Key concepts for Research Design
Understanding research methodology
Developing your Research Design
Developing your Research tools
About this guide
Starting on your research journey: Way of thinking about research
Overview of methodologies
Stages in developing a research design
Questionnaires
References
An introduction to terminology used in qualitative and quantitative research
Surveys
Developing your central research focus
Interviews
Useful resources
Understanding factor and variables
Experimental design
Why develop research questions?
Observation
Partners
FORUM
Case studies
Reading to develop research questions
Document Analysis
What are validity and reliability?
Action research
Developing a central research question
Using visual images in research
How can validity and reliability be improved
Ethnography
Wording your research questions
Deciding on the type of data you will need to collect
Triangulation
Phenomenology
Developing sub-questions that can be researched: Operationalisation
Selecting your sample
Grounded theory
Application of ideas: Developing sub-questions in practice
Narrative research
Visual approaches to help develop research questions
An introduction to data analysis
Application of ideas: Developing useful research questions
Some practical points to consider when planning your research
Strength of Evidence
Transferability
Areas for further research
Editor's Comments
Online Communities

Interviews

Using interviews in your research will enable you to explore key themes in more depth and to follow up interesting themes that arise in your discussions.

The following checklist will help you to identify the key features you need to consider when designing your interview questions:

  • Implementation of the interview: face-to-face / telephone / Skype; individual / paired / focus group

  • Structure of the interview questions: semi structured with open questions / structured with closed (qualitative) questions

  • Types of initial question: descriptive / experience / behaviour / knowledge / engaging with feelings / sensory / background

  • Types of follow-up question: prompting (to support interviewees who are struggling to interpret a question or to think of a relevant response) / probing (to explore an response in more depth to clarify or follow up an interesting theme)

  • Interview technique

  • Transcribing and coding the data from interviews

Sources of further information:

Introduction to interviews

http://oer.educ.cam.ac.uk/w/images/9/9b/RECOUP_Semi-structured_interviews_introduction_to_interviews.pdf

Overview of semi-structured interviews

http://designresearchtechniques.com/casestudies/semi-structured-interviews/

Practical ideas for carrying out semi-structured interviews

home.utah.edu/~u0326119/Comm4170-01/resources/Interviewguidelines.pdf

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