In your restatement, include any underlying assumptions that you’re making or conditions that you’re taking for granted. These assumptions will also inform the research methods you’ve chosen. Generally, state the variables you’ll test and the other conditions you’re controlling or assuming are equal.
If you want to research and document measurable social trends, or evaluate the impact of a particular policy on various variables, use a quantitative approach focused on data collection and statistical analysis. If you want to evaluate people’s views or understanding of a particular issue, choose a more qualitative approach. You can also combine the two. For example, you might look primarily at a measurable social trend, but also interview people and get their opinions on how that trend is affecting their lives.
For example, if you conducted a survey, you would describe the questions included in the survey, where and how the survey was conducted (such as in person, online, over the phone), how many surveys were distributed, and how long your respondents had to complete the survey. Include enough detail that your study can be replicated by others in your field, even if they may not get the same results you did. [4] X Research source
Qualitative research methods typically require more detailed explanation than quantitative methods. Basic investigative procedures don’t need to be explained in detail. Generally, you can assume that your readers have a general understanding of common research methods that social scientists use, such as surveys or focus groups.
For example, suppose you conducted a survey and used a couple of other research papers to help construct the questions on your survey. You would mention those as contributing sources.
Describe study participants specifically, and list any inclusion or exclusion criteria you used when forming your group of participants. Justify the size of your sample, if applicable, and describe how this affects whether your study can be generalized to larger populations. For example, if you conducted a survey of 30 percent of the student population of a university, you could potentially apply those results to the student body as a whole, but maybe not to students at other universities.
Reading other research papers is a good way to identify potential problems that commonly arise with various methods. State whether you actually encountered any of these common problems during your research.
If you encountered any problems as you collected data, explain clearly the steps you took to minimize the effect that problem would have on your results.
In some cases, this may be as simple as stating that while there were numerous studies using one method, there weren’t any using your method, which caused a gap in understanding of the issue. For example, there may be multiple papers providing quantitative analysis of a particular social trend. However, none of these papers looked closely at how this trend was affecting the lives of people.
Depending on your research questions, you may be mixing quantitative and qualitative analysis – just as you could potentially use both approaches. For example, you might do a statistical analysis, and then interpret those statistics through a particular theoretical lens.
For example, suppose you’re researching the effect of college education on family farms in rural America. While you could do interviews of college-educated people who grew up on a family farm, that would not give you a picture of the overall effect. A quantitative approach and statistical analysis would give you a bigger picture.
If in answering your research questions, your findings have raised other questions that may require further research, state these briefly. You can also include here any limitations to your methods, or questions that weren’t answered through your research.
Generalization is more typically used in quantitative research. If you have a well-designed sample, you can statistically apply your results to the larger population your sample belongs to.
