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Research Design or Procedure Chapter Draft Assignment Instructions

Overview

The Research Design or Procedure chapter of your project provides a detailed and comprehensive account of your research design and method. The identification and description of the research design and methods must be comprehensive and in sufficient detail to permit the replication of the study. Think of this chapter as the blueprint, or plan, for your study. If another researcher had only this chapter, they should be able to conduct and complete your study without asking any clarification questions.

In your previous assignment, you were asked to define and provide a rationale for your research design. In this assignment, you will build upon that work to complete a polished draft of your Research Design chapter (for a dissertation) or Procedures chapter (for a capstone). This includes a detailed description and justification of the research method(s) you have chosen to employ, a clear definition of the data you expect to gather, an explanation of how you intend to address potential challenges in collecting that data, and a justification of your measurement scheme(s). This draft should be properly edited for clarity, consistency, and APA style, and while it may later be revised or expanded, it should be submitted as a polished first draft.

Instructions

Complete the Title Page, specifying your chosen academic program and stating whether you are writing a capstone or a dissertation.

The body of the assignment should provide a complete and cohesive account of your research project, including your research question, research design, and research method, and should be no fewer than twenty (20) pages in length. This page count should not include the Title Page and References (which must be a part of your submission). This page count should not include other supplementary information or appendices that are not required.

Follow the format recommended in template currently posted in the Helms School of Government Doctoral Community for the manuscript format (i.e., capstone or dissertation) appropriate to your chosen academic program.

Assignment should be submitted in current APA format.

Assignment should include at least twenty (20) scholarly citations from peer reviewed academic sources.

The body of the assignment should provide a complete and cohesive account of your research project, including your research question, research design, and research method, and should be no fewer than twenty (20) pages in length. This page count should not include the Title Page and References (which must be a part of your submission). This page count should not include other supplementary information or appendices that are not required.

For dissertations:

Regardless of whether you are conducting a quantitative or qualitative dissertation, the following sections must be included:

o Research Question(s): Clearly state your research question(s) on the first page of the body of your paper. Be sure to incorporate the revisions from your prior submission.

o Research Design and Rationale: Identify your chosen design, explain its purpose, when and why it is typically used, why it is the most appropriate for your study, and address alternative designs and potential weaknesses. Be sure to incorporate the revisions from your prior submission.

o Research Method and Rationale: Identify whether your study uses a quantitative or qualitative methodology, explain why it is the most appropriate, and address its purpose, applicability, and potential strengths and limitations. Be sure to incorporate the revisions from your prior submission.

o Population and Sample: Define the general and specific population, explain your sampling strategy, justify the sample size and identify your inclusion and exclusion criteria

o Instrumentation: Identify and describe the primary and secondary tools, protocols, or instruments used to gather data. For qualitative designs this can include semi-structured interview and probing questions, and open-ended survey questions. For quantitative designs that can include valid and reliable instruments, or secondary data sources.

o Data Collection Procedures: Describe the steps taken to collect your data, including IRB approval, site authorization, recruitment, informed consent, and procedural details involved with the administration of your data collection.

o Data Analysis: Provide a clear description in a list format of how the data will be analyzed, including the techniques, coding processes, or statistical methods to be used that aligns with your research methodology (quantitvative v. qualitative).

o Ethical Considerations: Explain how your study adheres to ethical research principles, including respect for persons, beneficence, and justice, and discuss how you will ensure confidentiality and informed consent, as well as any potential risks to the participants or incentives provided.

For Quantitative Studies: In addition to the general requirements above, include a section addressing the validity and reliability of your research instruments, explaining how you will establish and assess these measures to ensure accuracy and consistency.

For Qualitative Studies: In addition to the general requirements above, include a section addressing truthfulness and trustworthiness, using the four established principles: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. Discuss the strategies (e.g., member checking, triangulation, reflexivity, or audit trails) you will use to ensure rigor and integrity in your study.

For capstones:

o Overview: The Overview should begin with a brief restatement of the purpose of the capstone project. The purpose should be followed by a brief restatement of the problem statement.

o Permissions: This subsection should address any and all relevant information about securing approval for the project. You may not necessarily need permissions in hand at this stage of the project but you should demonstrate that you understand what permissions will be required, who is authorized to provide them, and how you intend to obtain them.

o The Investigators Role: Clearly and thoroughly explain your relationship to the setting or site, and any bias or assumptions you bring to the project that may influence how you collect and analyze the data.

o Ethical Considerations: Any ethical considerations or implications of the capstone project should be discussed. These might include securing the collected data (e.g., locked filing cabinets and password protection for electronic files) and usage, influence, confidentiality (e.g., use of participant pseudonyms), and any other potential issues that might arise and how they will be addressed. The information contained in this capstone project is intended to solve a specific problem at a specific location for specific stakeholders and is not generalizable to a broader population. Therefore, this information should not be shared or distributed outside of the site-specific stakeholders.

o Questions: The proposed central project question should be derived from the problem and purpose statements. A well-written question is feasible, clear, significant, and ethical. In the capstone project, questions are pragmatic in nature. The central question is usually broader whereas the sub-questions are more specific. Begin your project with one main central question and at least three sub-questions. You should draw from prior assignments and incorporate feedback.

o Data Collection and Analysis: Detail your chosen data collection methods. Identify each data collection strategy, fully define it (with citation), explain the data collection strategy in laymans terms (if appropriate), discuss any logistics (when/where/how/with whom data will be collected, recorded, etc.) and justify its appropriateness for your project and for the relevant sub-question. You should draw from prior assignments and incorporate feedback.

Note: Though students are permitted to use their own previously submitted work on this assignment, submissions will otherwise be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.