Resarch Design in Social Research

de Vaus, D. (2001). Research Design in Social Research, Sage Publication's: London, UK.

p. 1 Social researchers ask two fundamental types of research questions:

1. What is going on (descriptive research)?
2. Why its is going on (explanatory research)?

Theory building

p. 5 attempts to answer the 'why' questions in social science are theories. Theory building is a process in which research begins with observations and uses inductive reasoning to derive a theory from these observations.

Theory testing

p.6 theory testing begins with a theory and uses theory to guide which observations to make

Research design

p.10 looks at four research design types:

• experiment
• case study
• longitudinal study
• cross-sectional design

Methods of data collection (p.10)

• questionnaire
• interview (structured or loose)
• observation
• analysis of documents
• unobtrusive methods

p.10 case studies (qualitative research) adopt an interpretive approach to data, studies 'things' within their context and considers the subjective meanings that people bring to their situation.

PART V - CASE STUDY DESIGNS

Case studies and theory: explanatory or descriptive

p. 220 holistic and embedded units of analysis

e.g school = holistic. The school comprises a range of constituent elements ( embedded units) such as executive, teachers, students, parents etc.

p. 221 explanatory case studies

p. 223 Theory building case studies

using a theory building approach to case studies we select cases to help develop and refine the propositions and develop a theory that fists the cases we study.

In the theory building approaches we begin only with a question and perhaps a basic proposition, look at real cases, and end up with a more specific theory or set of propositions as a result of examining actual cases.

p. 226 Single or multiple cases?

a single case design will normally be less compelling than multiple case designs.

p. 227 Parallel or sequential?

parallel - case studies done at once

p. 227 retrospective or prospective

p. 228 Types of case study designs

The elements are:

• descriptive or explanatory
• theory testing or theory building
• single or multiple case
• holistic or embedded units of analysis
• parallel or sequential case studies
• retrospective or prospective

15 CASE STUDY ANALYSIS (pp. 249-266)

p. 249 Methods for analysing case studies are less systematically developed (than for) other types of research design.

Statistical analysis

Meaning and context p. 250

Build subjective data about subjective meaning if behaviour for participants into the analysis of the case.

Analysis in descriptive case studies

Explanatory case studies p. 253

Theory testing analysis

• pattern matching
• time series analysis

Analysis for theory building: analytic induction p. 263

A strategy of analysis that directs the investigator to formulate generalisations that apply to all instances of the problem (generalisations that apply to all cases)