Research Methods for Dissertation Text

Whilst we describe the main characteristics of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods dissertations, the l rd dissertation site currently focuses on helping guide you through quantitative dissertations. Whether you are a student of the social sciences, psychology, education or business, or are studying medical or biological sciences, sports science, or another science based degree. Nonetheless, you may still find our introductions to qualitative dissertations and mixed methods dissertations useful, if only to decide whether these types of dissertation are for you. Qualitative dissertations and mixed methods dissertations in turn:

quantitative dissertations

when we use the word quantitative to describe quantitative dissertations.

We do not simply mean that the dissertation will draw on quantitative research methods or statistical analysis techniques. Answering research questions and/or hypotheses. Classic routes that you can follow include replication based studies. theory driven research and data driven dissertations. However, irrespective of the particular route that you adopt when taking on a quantitative dissertation, there are a number of core characteristics to quantitative dissertations: they typically attempt to build on and/or test theories. Whether adopting an original approach or an approach based on some kind of replication or extension. They answer quantitative research questions and/or research or null hypotheses.

They are mainly underpinned by positivist or post positivist research paradigms. They draw on one of four broad quantitative research designs i.e. quasi experimental or relationship based research designs.

With the goal of making generalisations from the sample being studied to a wider population. Although often end up applying non probability sampling techniques. They use research methods that generate quantitative data e.g. They draw heavily on statistical analysis techniques to examine the data collected, whether descriptive or inferential in nature. They assess the quality of their findings in terms of their reliability. tables and graphs that address each research question and/or hypothesis. They make conclusions in line with the findings.

And theories discussed in order to test and/or expand on existing theories, or providing insight for future theories. You will learn more about the characteristics of quantitative dissertations, as well as being able to choose between the three classic routes that are pursued in quantitative research: replication based studies. Upon choosing your route, the quantitative dissertations part of l rd dissertation will help guide you through these routes, from topic idea to completed dissertation, as well as showing you how to write up quantitative dissertations. Like qualitative research in general, are often associated with qualitative research methods such as unstructured interviews, focus groups and participant observation.

Whilst they do use a set of research methods that are not used in quantitative dissertations, qualitative research is much more than a choice between research methods. Qualitative research takes a particular approach towards the research process. The way that findings are presented and discussed, and so forth.

Ielts Writing Task 2 Band 8 Essays

Overall, qualitative dissertations will be very different in approach, depending on the particular route that you adopt e.g. narrative research and phenomenological research. However, irrespective of the route that you choose to follow, there are a number of broad characteristics to qualitative dissertations: they follow an emergent design. And sometimes even the qualitative research questions that you tackle, often evolve during the dissertation process. They use theory in a variety of ways sometimes drawing on theory to help the research process on other occasions, using theory to develop new theoretical insights sometimes both but the goal is infrequently to test a particular theory from the outset.

They can be underpinned by one of a number of research paradigms e.g. They follow research designs that heavily influence the choices you make throughout the research process, as well as the analysis and discussion of 'findings' i.e. Such research designs differ considerably depending on the route that is being followed, whether an autoethnography.

They try to use theoretical sampling a group of non probability sampling techniques with the goal of studying cases i.e. People or organisations that are most appropriate to answering their research questions. In natural settings , often using multiple research methods. They interpret the qualitative data through the eyes and biases of the researcher.

Pharmacist Career Research Paper

An inductive process to identify themes or abstractions that build a holistic/gestalt picture of what is being studied. They assess the quality of their findings in terms of their dependability. They present and discuss their findings through personal accounts. And other means that identify themes or abstracts. They discuss the theoretical insights arising from the findings in light of the research questions, from which tentative conclusions are made. You will be able to learn a little about appropriate research methods and sampling techniques in the fundamentals section of l rd dissertation. However, we have not yet launched a dedicated section to qualitative dissertations within l rd dissertation.

If this is something that you would like us to do sooner than later, please leave feedback.

mixed methods dissertations

mixed methods dissertations combine qualitative and quantitative approaches to research. Whilst they are increasingly used and have gained greater legitimacy, much less has been written about their components parts. There are a number of reasons why mixed methods dissertations are used, including the feeling that a research question can be better addressed by: collecting qualitative and quantitative data. And then analysing or interpreting that data, whether separately or by mixing it.

Conducting more than one research phase perhaps conducting qualitative research to explore an issue and uncover major themes, before using quantitative research to measure the relationships between the themes. One of the problems or challenges of mixed methods dissertations is that qualitative and quantitative research, as you will have seen from the two previous sections, are very different in approach. Therefore, when taking on a mixed methods dissertation, you need to think particularly carefully about the goals of your research, and whether the qualitative or quantitative components a are more important in philosophical, theoretical and practical terms, and b should be combined or kept separate. Again, as with qualitative dissertations, we have yet to launch a dedicated section of l rd dissertation to mixed methods dissertations. However, you will be able to learn about many of the quantitative aspects of doing a mixed methods dissertation in the quantitative dissertations part of l rd dissertation. You may even be able to follow this part of our site entirely if the only qualitative aspect of your mixed methods dissertation is the use of qualitative methods to help you explore an issue or uncover major themes, before performing quantitative research to examine such themes further.

Nonetheless, if you would like to see a dedicated section to mixed methods dissertations sooner than later, please leave feedback. This stage of the whole research process will be significant to the rest of your dissertation paper as whole. You will want to understand what the different methods are for research collection, such as questionnaires, surveys, interviews and focus groups to name just a few. Some of these types of data collection methods will have sub types to them too, which will further allow you to shape them to your individual research process and your own dissertation. If we look at the different methods that you could use to collect data, they will be split into quantitative and qualitative types. And the types of data collection methods used will mean that the focus of your dissertation research project will move in a qualitative or quantitative way. However, it probably wont be great to get to this point and then decide the methods that you are going to use to collect the different data.