3 Types of Research:
Qualitative
Quantitative
Mixed

When you start out to do research… you first make a decision of “what” you’re going to do. This means you’ve made a decision about the nature of the problem that you’re trying to answer… what sorts of methods / tools will you use?

You will have some sort of philosophical view of the nature of knowledge.

When you say “I will do a survey!” you are making a philosophical statement. You’re saying something about the problem you’re solving… how you will solve that problem… the survey is a method that will allow you to learn certain things about reality.

Sometimes though, if you don’t pick the right type of research to answer the right sort of question, you won’t really accomplish anything at all with the method (for example, using a survey if you really should do a focus group.)

So, you have “problem,” or a “mystery.” Then, you can turn that problem into a question, and you can look at it from the direction of “what sort of information do I need to answer that question. Which then leads to the step of “how can I get the information I need to answer that question?” Finally, you have to figure out how you do all of that.

In design, typically, you want to try to do research the same way that a scientist might: be objective!!! Get much better results that way… although… its not necessarily the same “type” of research that a scientist would do. The better the research, the higher the quality, the better your argument will be for validating your design. “We know that its valid because of these things we’ve done.” If you say, “well, I met this guy once that told me a thing or two and I based my design on that,” you don’t really prove your case or your design.

Erik wants us to be able to describe how we are doing research and tie it into the first chapter of Research Design (3rd Edition) in our December report. “Why do you want to do a survey?” “Why do you want to do a focus group?” Tie it back into this book to make the argument that much stronger!