Research Design Remember that a research design is exactly what the name implies. The key is thinking consciously about the design, about how we exactly learn what is true and about likely causality. Research designs are highly structured and have the following elements: I. Question What is the question that is driving your research? Why is it interesting or important? You should identify some broad debate involving the question and/or its relevance to current issues. II. Hypothesis and To check the plagarisation of rewritten article click the Check Plagarism Button.
To check the plagarisation of rewritten article click the Check Plagarism Button.To check the plagarisation of rewritten article click the Check Plagarism Button.s You should state a likely hypothesis about causality. You should clearly identify your dependent variable. You should also clearly identify the independent variable in the hypothesis and identify a handful of other possible independent variables (ie, other possible hypotheses). It?s important to discuss why these variables and how they are measured/defined. You can?t use words like ?better? or ?stability?, for example, without stating what exactly these words mean. Even if you talk about the economy, are you talking about GDP levels, GDP growth, per capita GDP, or economic distribution (most easily identified by the Gini co-efficient)? III. Methodology Are you going to use a most similar or most different systems design? For most questions, a most similar system design is more appropriate. How many cases are you going to use? It?s possible to use a single case for certain kinds of study, however it will rarely be enough to control for very many independent variables. Usually 3-5 is good number. There are times in which you will want to use a large-N study, primarily if you want to do statistical correlations. For example, if your hypothesis is something about how democratic states are different than non-democratic states, you can divide the world into democracies and non-democracies. The primary point is that your method must be appropriate to your question and hypothesis. IV. Cases You must discuss which cases you have chosen and why. As part of this, you should note how you expect these cases will help control for which independent variables. What constitute a case depends on the question. So, if you question is: why do neo-liberal reforms seems to work better in some countries than others? Your cases will be countries. If you question is: what causes ethnic violence? Your cases will be examples of ethnic violence. If your question is: Do Presidents who govern during a recession tend to get reelected? Your cases will be presidential administrations. V. Expected Findings This should a paragraph in which you reiterate the importance of the study, discuss what you expect to be the result of your research, and note which variables/alternate hypotheses you likely will not be able to disprove.