- 1). Establish a research question. Decide the overall area to be researched. Before a literature review can be conducted, the researcher must have a general area of study in mind.
- 2). Conduct a literature review. Read all of the academic studies connected with the research area. Through the literature review, decide on a specific area of study. A literature review should give the researcher a clear idea of what types of studies have been done in the area and what types of studies are needed.
- 3). Determine the research questions or hypotheses that will be answered in the study. These should be very specific questions that the data collected from the research will answer. It could be something like "what are the job satisfaction levels of secondary teachers in public schools."
- 4). Decide how best to answer the research questions or hypotheses. Use quantitative methods such as surveys, experiments or content analyses when they would be more effective. Qualitative methods such as extensive interviews or observation should be used when they would be more effective. Only use both if that method will most thoroughly answer the research questions or hypotheses.
- 5). Design the research project. Decide whether to gather the qualitative and quantitative data at the same time or sequentially. There are advantages to gathering the quantitative data first. The subjects' familiarity with the researcher could bias quantitative data. Subjects who know the researcher well may change the way they respond to experiments or surveys in order to please the researcher.
- 6). Conduct the research. Keep in mind that it typically takes more time to do qualitative research than quantitative research.
- 7). Write the research results. Integrating both types of results can be difficult. Make sure the writing flows naturally. Also, label each type of research and explain how it was gathered. This is especially important so readers know what research is generalizable. Typically, the results from quantitative research that uses random samples can be assumed to hold true for all people within that group. For example, if a random selection of likely voters shows that 55 percent consider the economy the most important issue in the election, it can be assumed that about 55 percent of all voters consider the economy the most important issue. By its nature, qualitative research can rarely be generalizable.
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