Abstract
This book focuses on social research design. Rather than presenting a blueprint, it focuses on and discusses in detail the core elements of research design and the choices that need to be made at the research planning stage. The book consists of an introduction and eight chapters. Chapter 1 distinguishes research design from a research proposal, describing the purpose and the elements of both, and presents in detail the core elements of a research design. It furthermore treats the issue of ethics in social research (p. 31) and offers a relationship matrix which incorporates all the elements of a social research design (p. 33). In order to illustrate the choices to be made within each research paradigm, Chapter 2 presents four topics related to environmental studies, which, throughout the book, serve as examples for research in four paradigms (inductive, deductive, retroductive and abductive). Each topic serves as an example for research performed in each of these paradigms.
Chapters 3 to 7 present the various core elements of a research design. Thus, Chapter 3 deals with research questions, and links this topic with research purposes, hypotheses and the literature review. It is the main foundation on which the other chapters are built. Chapter 4 discusses the four strategies (inductive, deductive, retroductive and abductive) in detail as alternative procedures to answer research questions. Each strategy is based on a series of ontological and epistemological assumptions which represent views on social reality and on how knowledge can be generated. This chapter presents an overview of available epistemological and ontological positions and shows how decisions on the use of one of these strategies dictates further choices for method and data collection and analysis. Chapter 5 discusses the role of concepts, theories, hypotheses and models in social research. It provides a review of classical and contemporary views on the relationship between theory and research. The roles of concepts, theories and methods in the four research strategies are explored. Chapter 6 deals with the sources of and the methods for selecting data and the variety of contexts from which data can be obtained. It compares techniques used to select data and it concludes with a critical review on the role of case studies. Chapter 7 presents methods for collecting, reducing and analyzing data. It centers on a discussion of the use of qualitative or quantitative research, or a mixture of the two. Rather than presenting specific techniques, it demonstrates links between research strategies and methods. While strategies entail ontological assumptions, methods do not. For these reasons, a variety of methods can be used in various (but not all) strategies.
Chapter 8 presents four sample research designs on a set of related research topics, using all four strategies. It illustrates four different ways to relate individual choices to each of the core elements in order to formulate and plan a coherent research design. These paradigms serve as an illustration to further the purposes of this book: they do not entail a ready-made step-by-step model. The paradigms are then discussed using the topics presented in Chapter 2 as examples.
The final chapter provides supervisors with the option to ask students to formulate coherent research strategies based on the same topic, but using different strategies. This procedure allows the student to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, to experience how core elements work differently within each strategy and to develop a personal view on which strategy best serves their research purposes and orientation at any one time.
This book complements an earlier book of the author, Blaikie (2007), which dealt with the philosophy of social research. While this book is directed at students in the social sciences, and academics who are new to the field of supervising postgraduate research, I believe it is also of value to experienced researchers. For example, because of the level of abstraction at which it discusses the core elements of a research design, it provides a good basis for performing creative research. Discourse analysts are likely to find an interest in the reflexivity of the approach, the abductive research strategy, as well as the focus on Structuration Theory and the attention paid to ethical issues throughout the book.