Research Design and Historical Methods

Research Design

• Research design is a systematic plan of research.
• It formulates a strategy to answer research questions.
• It details methods for collecting, recording, processing, and analyzing data.
• It's a plan for collecting data to obtain desired information and test hypotheses properly.

Learning Competencies

• Learners should apply the principles of research design.
• Learners should create valid experimental designs.

Historical Designs

• Historical designs involve a systematic and critical inquiry into past events.
• The critical method is used to understand and interpret facts applicable to current issues.
• Data can be sourced from primary and secondary sources.
• Primary sources: documents, relics, oral testimonies.
• Secondary sources: secondhand information.

Steps of Historical Research (Good and Scates, 1972)

• Collection of data, including consideration of documents and primary, secondary sources and their organisation.
• Data criticism, including external and internal criticism.
• Presentation of facts, organising, composing, explaining, and interpreting them.

Descriptive Design

• Focuses on present conditions.
• Aims to find new truths, increasing knowledge and insight.
• Uncovers causal relationships and clarifies problems.
• Essential for object and person understanding.
• Uses instruments like test papers, questionnaires, interviews, schedules, observation schedules, checklists, score cards, and rating scales.

Descriptive Survey

• Appropriate when objects in a class vary.
• Aims to understand how conditions differ among objects.

Survey Research

• Involves asking a large group questions about a topic.
• Methods: face-to-face, mail, telephone.
• Purpose: describe population characteristics.
• Focuses on variables like age, gender, status, attitudes.
• Full population studies are rare.

Cross-Sectional Survey

• Collects data from a sample of a defined population at one point in time.
• May take days, weeks, or longer to collect data.
• A census is a survey of the whole population.

Trend Study

• Surveys different samples from the same population at different points in time.

Cohort Study

• Follows a specific population over a period of time.

Panel Study

• Surveys the same respondents at different points during a study.

Descriptive-Normative Survey

• Determines the typical or normal condition or practice.
• Can compare local results to national trends.

Descriptive Status

• A good design for problem-solving.
• Aims to determine conditions in cases chosen for study.
• Employs quantitative description.

Descriptive Analysis

• Describes an object's nature by separating it into parts.

Descriptive Classification

• Used in natural sciences like botany, zoology etc.
• Classifying specimens from phylum to species.

Descriptive Evaluative

• Evaluates the worth of a current study.
• Often used to appraise the implementation of an approach.

Descriptive Comparative

• Explores differences between at least two entities.
• Formally gathers data to compare and rank.

Casual Comparative Research

• Investigates the cause or consequence of existing differences between groups.

Correlational Survey

• Measures the relationship between two variables.
• Can be positive, negative, or no correlation.

Correlational Research

• Investigates relationships among variables without influencing them.

Longitudinal Survey

• Investigates the same subjects over an extended period.
• Collects information at multiple points in time.

Experimental Design

• A problem-solving study, often useful in natural sciences.

Experimental Research

• Aims to directly influence a variable to test cause-and-effect relationships.
• Independent variable: manipulated variable.
• Dependent variable: outcome or criterion variable.

Types of Experimental Design

• Single-group designs.
• Two-group designs.
• Two-pair group designs.
• Parallel-group designs.
• Pre-test-Post-test designs.

Quasi-experimental Design

• Involves an exchange of treatments.

Complete Randomized Design

• Treatment applied to determine the cause of change.

Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD)

• Repeated treatments to determine cause of change on test subjects

Correlation Design

• Determines the relationship of two dependent variables, noting how an independent variable affects them.

Case Study Design

• A problem-solving technique for describing past, present, and future events.
• A deep investigation of an individual, institution, community, or group.
• Addresses developmental, adjustment, remedial, and corrective procedures.

Cycle of a Case Study (Good and Scates, 1972)

• Identifying the phenomenon.
• Gathering data related to the phenomenon.
• Diagnosing causal factors.
• Applying remedial or adjustment measures.
• Following up to assess effectiveness.