Dissertation Research Strategy: Getting started – Research Strategy

For undergraduate and master's level dissertation students, the Research Strategy chapter is important for three main reasons: First, it not only explains what research you performed, but also justifies all the major choices you made throughout the dissertation process. Second, it can be one of the easiest places within the dissertation to either gain or lose marks. Third, many students find it the most challenging chapter of their dissertation to get to grips with and write in a clear and consistent way. As such, the purpose of this article is twofold: First, we explain the role of the Research Strategy chapter of your dissertation. Second, we briefly set out the major sections of the Research Strategy chapter. Our aim is to point to the many "free" sections within the Lærd Dissertation website where you can learn what key terms mean, as well as help you plan your Research Strategy chapter.

In almost all fields, whether the physical or social sciences, humanities, engineering, and so forth, undergraduate and master's level dissertations have a clear, distinct section or chapter that outlines the research strategy that you have chosen to guide your dissertation. This is necessary whether you choose to conduct primary or secondary research, or draw on quantitative and/or qualitative data.

Your dissertation guidelines may refer to this important chapter (or section) of your dissertation as Research Design, Research Methodology or Research Methods, but these are just three of the components that can be included in the Research Strategy chapter. We prefer to use the heading Research Strategy because all the choices you make in this chapter should be strategic; that is, the research paradigm you believe in guides your research design. This in turn leads to the selection of particular research methods, together with an appropriate sampling strategy and data analysis techniques, whether qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods in nature. Even the way that you present your findings (Presenting Findings), assess their quality (Research Quality) and make ethical decisions (Research Ethics) are all interlinked. As a result, there is no "one best way" when it comes to choosing a research strategy for your dissertation. The choice you make is highly specific to your proposed research. Your task is to first recognise the different components that make up the Research Strategy chapter (or section) and then choose which ones apply to you.

There are a number of components to the Research Strategy chapter (or section) of a dissertation. Whilst it is best to consult your dissertation guidelines to see which components you are required to include, the broad headings are research paradigm, research design, research methods, sampling strategy, data analysis, research quality and research ethics. These are very briefly described below, together with links to the major sections within this website where you can learn more:

SECTION A Research Paradigm

We all have basic sets of beliefs that guide the way that we perform research. Before doing a dissertation, you may not know what these are or what to call them. When doing research, we summarise these beliefs under so-called research paradigms. There are a number of these research paradigms (e.g., positivism, post-positivism, critical theory or constructivism).

Getting your head around these research paradigms is arguably the most challenging aspect of your Research Strategy chapter (or section); and for some students, it's the most challenging part of the whole dissertation. Unfortunately, it is important because the beliefs that you have, whether you know what these are or not, guide the way you do your dissertation in a very practical way. That is, these beliefs tends to determine everything from your choice of research design and research methods, right through to the data analysis techniques you use, and even the way that you assess the quality of your findings.

Whilst some students doing dissertations at the undergraduate and master's level do not have to worry about these things, most do.

SECTION B Research Design

Broadly speaking, when you do a dissertation, you will use one of three research designs: a qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods research design.

Your choice of research design will be guided by the research paradigm you believe in and the type of research you are trying to carry out. For example, some types of research, such as experiments in the physical sciences, more naturally lend themselves to quantitative research designs. By contrast, more exploratory research in the social sciences is often found to use qualitative research designs.

Whilst these are crude comparisons, the important point is that your choice of research design will influence your choice of research methods and sampling strategy, considerations of research quality, as well as your approach towards research ethics.

SECTION C Research Methods

The Research Methods section of your Research Strategy chapter usually serves three purposes:

It explains the potential research methods that you could have chosen to use in your dissertation. Whilst the choices available to you depend on the research paradigm and research design you adopted, there are still usually a number of options available to you. For example, even if you followed a constructivist research paradigm and a qualitative research design (e.g., an ethnographic research methodology), you could still choose between interviews, participant observation, and other qualitative research methods. Of course, in practice, you may select more than one research method to use.
It states which research methods you actually chose.
It leaves you to justify your selection of research methods. In so doing, you typically need to discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of your choices. This needs to be very specific. You need to focus on the advantages and disadvantages that your choice of research methods had for your dissertation rather than the generic advantages and disadvantages that are explained in research methods textbooks.

SECTION D Sampling Strategy

Sampling involves collecting units (also called cases, objects) that you are going to analyse to help answer the research questions you have set in your dissertation. Such units (cases or objects) could be people (e.g., students, managers, nurses), physical objects (e.g., laptops, houses, cars), cases (e.g., organisations like banks or estate agents, institutions, individual countries, etc.), or pieces of data (e.g., customer transactions at Wal-Mart or Tesco, breaking speed of a particular model of car, etc.).

Your sampling strategy determines how you select such units to be included in your research and why you selected them. Therefore, the Sampling Strategy section of your Research Strategy chapter tends to do four things:

It describes what you units are (i.e., are they people, objects, cases, pieces of data, etc.).
It explains the types of sampling technique (i.e., either a probability or non-probability sampling technique) that you could have used to select the units to include in your sample.
It states the specific sampling technique that you actually used (e.g., simple random sampling, which is a type of probability sampling technique).
It justifies your choice of sampling technique. Such a choice is based not only on the practicalities of your dissertation (e.g., what time you have available, what access you have, etc.), but also theoretical considerations (i.e., your choice of research paradigm, research design and research methods).

Therefore, whilst we have a whole section of this website dedicated to Sampling Strategy, it is important that you have first selected your research paradigm, research design, research methodology and research methods before selecting an appropriate sampling technique.

SECTION E Research Quality

One of the most important sections of your Research Strategy chapter is a discussion of the criteria by which the quality of your findings should be assessed. In other words, how should the reader (i.e., the person marking your work) assess the quality of your findings?

The answer to this question depends on the research paradigm and research design that is guiding your dissertation. For example, if you are using a post-positivist research paradigm and a quantitative research design, the quality of your findings will most likely be assessed in terms of their internal validity, external validity and objectivity. By contrast, the findings in a dissertation guided by a constructivist research paradigm and a qualitative research design would more likely be assessed in terms of their credibility, confirmability, dependability, and transferability, amongst other factors.

We explain the various ways you can assess the quality of your findings in the section: Research Quality.

SECTION F Research Ethics

The Research Ethics section of your Research Strategy chapter explains the ethical choices you made and any ethical challenges you faced during the dissertation process. This is highly specific to your dissertation, reflecting the nature of your research, the research methods that you adopted, and the way that you present your findings.

For example, dissertations that involve participants under 18 years of age may have to get formal approval from parents (or a legal guardian). However, this may also depend on what you are trying to find out from such participants and the research methods you intend to use. Sometimes this means that there is a procedural aspect to the Research Ethics section, explaining how you attained permissions (e.g., from supervisors, the Ethics Committee at your university, parents or legal guardians, the head of an organisation, etc.).

We highlight some of the ethical issues you may face in your dissertation and how to address them in the section: Research Ethics.

SECTION G Data Analysis

All dissertations involve some form of data analysis, whether you collected qualitative or quantitative data (or both). However, the type of data analysis techniques that you used to analyse the data (e.g., statistical analysis, content analysis, discourse analysis, etc.) will vary depending on the research paradigm, research design, research methods and sampling strategy that you have used.

In some cases, the data analysis techniques you used will be pre-planned, whilst others may arise during the data collection process. For example, in research that draws on a post-positivist research paradigm, a quantitative research design and a probability sampling technique, it will be more likely that the data analysis techniques used (i.e., statistical analysis from pre-defined variables) will be pre-planned. By contrast, where research draws on a constructivist research paradigm, a qualitative research design, and theoretical sampling technique (i.e., non-probability sampling), it is possible that the choice of data analysis technique (e.g., the gradual coding of interview data for content analysis) will emerge as the research process develops. Whilst this is a crude comparison (and a crude generalisation), the purpose of the Data Analysis section of the Research Strategy chapter is to:

State the data analysis techniques you used.
Explain the data analysis that you performed.
Justify the data analysis choices you made.

These issues, together with the various data analysis techniques you can use in your dissertation are discussed in the section: Data Analysis.

Moving forward...

When you come to write up the Research Strategy chapter of your dissertation, you may find that some of the headings discussed above are labelled slightly differently in your guidelines. Nonetheless, the broad headings above include the main factors you should think about when planning your Research Strategy chapter (or section). When writing this section or chapter of your dissertation, you may also include a number of sub-headings under each of these main headings. For example, if you decided to use a mixed methods research design, you would use qualitative and quantitative research methods. Both the qualitative research methods and the quantitative research methods you used would justify a sub-heading of their own.