The scholar practitioner's guide to research design

With a clear purpose in place, quantitative researchers have a roadmap for crafting their research questions and hypotheses that will further focus the approach they will take to investigate their topic (i.e., their study’s research design).

The selection of a research design is guided by the study’s purpose and research questions and hypotheses, and the design then links the research questions and hypotheses to the data that will be collected. You should keep in mind, however, that the research process is interactive, not necessarily proceeding in a linear fashion from one component to the next. Rather, the writing of research questions could, for example, necessitate adjustments to the study’s purpose statement. Nevertheless, when presented together, the various components of a research study should align. As you learned last week, alignment means that a research study possesses clear and logical connections among all of its various components.

In addition to considering alignment, when researchers select a research design, they must also consider the ethical implications of their choice, including, for example, what their design selection means for participant recruitment, procedures, and privacy.

For this Discussion, you will evaluate quantitative research questions and hypotheses in assigned journal articles in your discipline and consider the alignment of theory, problem, purpose, research questions and hypotheses, and design. You will also identify the type of quantitative research design the authors used and explain how it was implemented. You will also complete online training in the protection of human research participants.

With these thoughts in mind, refer to the Journal Articles handout for your assigned articles for this Discussion. If your last name starts with A through I, use Article A. If your last name starts with J through R, use Article B. If your last name starts with S through Z, use Article C.