Congressional Record Index Successful Writing Tips | Devoted to supporting writers of dissertations and other challenging projects Urban Dictionary_ Define Your World Research design A research design is the "blue print" of the study. The design of a study defines the study type (descriptive, correlational, semi-experimental, experimental, review, meta-analytic) and sub-type (e.g., descriptive-longitudinal case study), research question, hypotheses, independent and dependent variables, experimental design, and, if applicable, data collection methods and a statistical analysis plan. Research design is the framework that has been created to seek answers to research questions. Design types and sub-types[edit] There are many ways to classify research designs, but sometimes the distinction is artificial and other times different designs are combined. Sometimes a distinction is made between "fixed" and "flexible" or, synonymously, "quantitative" and "qualitative" research designs.[2] However, fixed designs need not be quantitative, and flexible design need not be qualitative. Grouping[edit] Confirmatory versus exploratory research[edit] Examples of fixed designs[edit]
Writing a Literature Review What is a literature review? A literature review is a description of the literature relevant to a particular field or topic. This is often written as part of a postgraduate thesis proposal, or at the commencement of a thesis. How does a literature review differ from other assignments? The review, like other forms of expository writing, has an introduction, body and conclusion, well-formed paragraphs, and a logical structure. What counts as 'literature'? ‘Literature’ covers everything relevant that is written on a topic: books, journal articles, newspaper articles, historical records, government reports, theses and dissertations, etc. Why do a literature review? A literature review gives an overview of the field of inquiry: what has already been said on the topic, who the key writers are, what the prevailing theories and hypotheses are, what questions are being asked, and what methodologies and methods are appropriate and useful. How many references to look for? 1. Lane, Nancy D 1996. 2. 3.