Blueprint Bonanza
Research design is described as a blueprint, a plan, a guide, and _______, structure for specifying relationships among variables.
What is a framework?
This type of study is loosely structured and is used to expand understanding of a management dilemma.
What is an exploratory study?
A study with this objective focuses on the past — who, what, when, where, how much.
What is a reporting study?
This research design offers no ability to manipulate variables — it's simply an after-the-fact report of what happened.
What is ex-post facto design?
This measurement emphasis focuses on frequency and numbers rather than meaning.
What is quantitative research?
This sampling approach collects data from every member of the population, rather than a subset.
What is a census?
Unlike an exploratory study, a formal study always begins with these two things.
What are hypotheses (or research questions)?
A study with this objective focuses on the present state of who, what, when, where, and how much.
What is a descriptive study?
This topical-scope option favors significant depth over breadth, drawing on multiple sources of information.
What is a case study?
This design uses more than one methodology within a single study.
What is a multiple-methodology design?
This data collection method observes behaviors or conditions without directly interacting with participants — think scanning or tracking.
What is monitoring?
This exploratory method involves the researcher joining and observing a group from the inside.
What is participant observation?
This type of causal study explains why or how something is currently happening.
What is a causal-explanatory study?
This time dimension involves only one measurement, taken at a single point in time.
What is cross-sectional?
This type of study involves many measurements of the same variables over a specified period of time.
What is a longitudinal study?
According to the research design flowchart, this is the very first step in the process, occurring even before the research is designed.
What are investigative questions?
This pair of exploratory techniques studies personal space and body movement.
What are proxemics and kinesics?
This type of causal study forecasts what will happen, and why, in the future.
What is a causal-predictive study?
This research environment involves conducting a study under controlled, artificial conditions rather than out in the real world.
What are laboratory conditions?
This term describes a data collection method built around directly asking participants questions, such as through surveys or interviews.
What is a communication study?
This is the final stage of the overall research process, coming right after the measurement instrument is developed.
What is collect and prepare the data?
This formal-study method involves manipulating or controlling one or more variables to observe the effect on another.
What is a true experiment?
Descriptive studies serve three purposes: describing population characteristics, estimating frequency of characteristics, and this third one, involving relationships between variables.
What is discovery or association among variables?
This third type of research environment recreates real-world conditions in a structured way, without placing the study out in the field or locking it inside a lab.
What is a simulation?
This is the tool researchers craft to actually gather measurement data — it may require accompanying training guides for data collectors.
What is a measurement instrument?