Comparative research or method is the approach most widely adopted by comparative politics, international relations, public policy and developmental politics. In this approach, political events and processes are often clarified and illuminated by comparison with similar events and processes in other contexts. The major difficulty with comparative design is in finding comparable cases: that is, examples which are similar in a large number of respects to the case which the researchers want to treat as constant, but dissimilar in the variables that they wish to compare to each other. The major methodological task in comparative research is to devise and select theoretical problems, conceptual schemes, samples and measurement and analysis strategies that are comparable or equivalent across the societies involved in a particular study (Armer, 1973:51).
Comparative design thus presents the researcher with considerable challenges, especially when different countries are being compared. The researcher must select a theoretical problem that is best illuminated by comparative research. Relevant and equivalent data should then be collected and hypotheses tested. Comparative analysis sharpens our understanding of the context in which theoretical problems occur and enables causal inferences to be drawn. However, as comparative analysis usually involves only a relatively limited number of cases, caution has to be maintained about the levels of generalisation that can be made (Burnham et al., 2004:55-57).
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3.5 The Components of a Research Design
In project writing, a research design tends to occupy the shortest chapter in the presentation of the report, a reader usually looks for specific information about the plan of study, exhibited by the investigator and the sort of information desired under the research design is as follows:
(a) Specification of the population, which is the subject of the investigation in it’s entirely.
(b) Specification of the sample, the proportion of the population involved in the inquiry.
(c) Indication of the instrumentation or the apparatus employed:
This includes the data collection instruments, the measuring instruments, as well as their functions in the research process.
(d) A research design should also indicate the method of analysis of the data collected from the field of inquiry and the modes of their presentation on the report. Here, the researcher also discloses the plan for statistical analysis of the data that will lead to objective confirmation or rejection of the hypothesis earlier stated.
3.6 Some Inadequate Research Designs
There are some research designs that are faulty, but are still commonly used in behavioural research. It is necessary that one should be able to recognise them and understand why they are inadequate. There are about four inadequate designs in use. These inadequacies are basically structural weaknesses that lead to no control or poor control of the independent variables.
One Group Design: In this design, the researcher tries to conduct a study with one group of subjects. This has also been called ''One-shot Case Study''. It takes the form of:
Treatment Post-test
What makes the one group design scientifically inadequate is that there is no control group which can act as a comparing group in order to establish that whatever difference observed in the Post-test is from the effect of the treatment alone.
One Group Pre-test and Post-test Design: In this design, one group is used and both pre-test and post-test are given, including the treatment:
Pre-test Treatment Post-test
This design is faulty on a few accounts. Areas of default are found in:
Measurement: There can be "reactive measures" in the subjects emanating from the pre-test given to them. Measures involving memory are quite reactive. If one takes a test now, one is more likely to remember later, things that were included in the test.
Therefore, observed changes in the post-test may be due to reactive measures rather than the treatment given.
History: Between the time of pre-test and post-test, many things could have occurred; some extraneous variables can affect the subjects. They could have learnt on their own, such that the observed changes in the post-test could have come from the extraneous variables, rather than the treatment.
Maturity: The longer the time lapse between the pre-test and post-test, the more the subjects mature; and with maturation changes occur which could also affect performance in the pre- test.
Again there is no control group for better comparison.
Simulated before and after Design
Pre-test X Ya Post-Test
Yb
In this design, a simulated group (Yb) i.e. a group you regard as similar to the group from which you would collect your data, is used. It serves as a control group. The problem is that the group on whom the pre-test is administered is different from the group on whom the post-test is administered. Therefore, the people you are taking the pre-test scores from are not the same as the people you collect the post-test scores from:
so comparison will be difficult and unreliable.
Two groups without control designs _Post-test _Post-test
The problem with this design is that the two groups being compared are not the same or are not equivalent, since there is no randomisation and there is no control group.
Control Group: This is the group, which is the same with or equivalent to the experimental group but is not given the treatment.
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As already highlighted, Research designs serve the purposes of:
providing answers to the research questions or hypotheses, controlling the variance, allowing for generalisability of the research findings and ensuring the internal and external validity of the results of the research.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE
What is a research design?
4.0 CONCLUSION
In this unit, we have been able to give an insight into the role of research design in empirical studies. Every research project has an implicit or explicit logic that provides the framework for the research and guides the research strategy. The research design will set out the priorities of the research: for example, describing the hypotheses to be tested, listing the research questions, and specifying the evidence needed to provide a convincing test for the research hypotheses and the data needed to answer the research questions. These priorities will determine whether the evidence should be predominantly qualitative or quantitative and how it should be collected and analysed.
5.0 SUMMARY
The planning and execution of a research project are critical to its success. This plan or research design involves determining the objectives of the research, developing research questions, transforming these questions into hypotheses, and deciding on the appropriate research strategy to test the hypotheses and convince a skeptical audience that the evidence is appropriate and valid and that the conclusions drawn from the analysis are accurate. This unit has also described the five major types of research design.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
List the types of research designs and discuss two of them in details.
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING
Ackoff, R. L. (1953). Design of Social Research .Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Armer, M. (1973). “Methodolgical Problems and Possibilities in Comparative Research.” In: M. Armer & A. Grimshaw (Eds).
Comparative Social Research Methodological Problems and Strategies.
London: John Wiley.
Bryman, A. (2001). Social Science Methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burnham, P, Gilland, K., Grant, W. & Layton-Henry, Z. (2004).
Research Methods in Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kerlinger, F. N. (1986). Foundations of Behavioural Research:
Educational and Psychological Enquiry London: Holt, Rinehart & Winton.
Hakim, C. (2000). Research Design: Successful Designs for Social and Economic research. (2nd ed.). London: Routedge.
Punch, K.F. (1998). Introduction to Social Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches. London: Sage.
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