Successful Writing Tips | Devoted to supporting writers of dissertations and other challenging projects 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. A critical literature review is a critical assessment of the relevant literature. It is unlikely that you will be able to write a truly critical assessment of the literature until you have a good grasp of the subject, usually at some point near the end of your 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? How many references to look for? How to write a literature review