Research Design/a lesson

Q: What is the Meaning of research design?

Ans: Research design is the master plan of methods, approaches, techniques, variables, data source, evaluation methodology, timing and costing of all research activities etc.

All these description help in understanding and executing research activities.

A research design should furnish the following details:

1. A statement of research objective.

2. The methods of analysis to treat and analyze the data.

3. The procedure of research execution systematically.

Q: What are the types of research design?

Ans: The types of research design are:

1. Exploratory Research Design

The main objective of the exploratory research is to manage the broad problem into specific problem statement and generate possible hypothesis.

The exploratory studies are mainly used for:

a) Providing information to enable a more precise problem definition.

b) Establishing research priorities.

c) Making researcher aware of the problem situation.

d) Data collecting information like tools, methods and techniques.

The generally used methods in exploratory research are:

a) Survey of existing Research

The researcher explores the published and unpublished books, journals, magazines and other literature available on the problem definition. This usually does not provide solution to the problem but it can certainly provide direction to the research process.

b) Survey of experienced individuals

The professionals, academicians, experts, managers etc are the individual who can provide substantial data on the research problem.

c) Analysis of selected case situations

Sometimes the popular cases are gone through to develop understanding on the given research problem.

2. Descriptive Research design

The descriptive could be quantitative and qualitative both. it describes the given problem/phenomenon to establish the relationship between the factors.

For example, descriptive research design for measuring the attributes of successful sales people, or evaluate a training program or a retailing situation.

The descriptive research is used for the following purposes:

a) To describe the characteristics of certain group of interest to the marketer, like users of product.

b) To estimate the target customer in the given population.

c) To make predictions for the specific future periods.

The panel research Design

In this research design the respondents are frequently asked for the information over a period if time, usually from retail outlets, dealers, consumers or just individuals. This continuous measurement of variables helps in predicting the future behavior of the respondent or the concerned

Cross sectional Design

The cross sectional design is aimed at assessing the situation or phenomenon the researcher or marketer is interested in. like the no. of persons recalled advertisement out of the total population of viewers. So this way it provides a cross section.

Let us take another example, How many of users of Compaq buyers are happy with the
services.

Focus group

The focus group design is an informal research design in which a group of people come together and discuss extensively relating to their experiences or opinion.

Usually such conversations are recorded then analyzed later on. The discussion is guided by a moderator.

Q: What are the factors that affect experiential validity?

Ans: the factors that affect experiential validity are:

1. History: When the Research is conducted to measure the sales of territory before and after sales men were trained. Usually we find increase in sales of territory but this effect is not only because of training alone but other factors could have affected this result. and over a period of time the influence of training the result is seen

1. Maturation: In our sales men training, the increase of sales could be because the sales men got experienced and well introduced with the customer in the passage of time. The duration of time has direct relation with performance of sales men. Organization, branch etc.

1. Testing: When the respondents know that they are being observed or the result is being measured this makes respondents biased in their behaviors.
2. Instrumental: This refers to the effect caused by changes in the measuring instrument or process during the experiment.
3. Selection Bias: When the sample is selected which does not represent the population is called selection bias which also affects the validity of the experiment.
4. Test Unit Mortality: Referring to the sales men training,

Some of the sales persons might drop out or quit the training in this case it is difficult to know if hoe they are performing in that group.

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