Research Design and Design

Black Women in White Male Dominant Industries: Are Set-Aside and Inclusion Programs Really Assisting?

A research design is the plan or technique which could be adopted for a research to take place. It is a systematic method of finding answers to the questions or hypotheses for the study. It is important for the results to be reliable with maximum efficiency based on correct hypotheses formulated so that a clear direction is set, which would lead the researcher to an accurate selection of the research design that would give maximum accurate results.

Flexible Design

Flexible design of research mainly involves freedom during data collection process since one of the reasons for using this design can be that the variable data that needs to be measured cannot be taken into account quantitatively. In the given research topic, which is black women in white male dominant industries, the flexible design would not be able to measure in quantitative terms. The assistance of inclusion programs could be measured qualitatively as their quality and helpfulness could be measured in 'qualitative' terms. If this is the case, then it would be a lengthy process to analyze the results of the research.

Although the research topic could be covered in detail and in depth when such research design is used, there is a possibility that if the data is collected based on 'human experiences' then it would be more compelling as compared to that which is quantitatively measured. Moreover, with this research design, the researcher would have a clear direction of what to expect from the research and its results and with this clear vision (Atieno, 2009, p. 16), efforts are geared towards seeing a bigger picture of the scenario.

Fixed Design

Fixed design of research is mainly theory-driven and the design of the study is fixed before the actual data collection takes place. If a theory-driven strategy is adopted for the given research topic, then the results would be powerful in empirical and analytical terms (Coryn et al., 2011, p. 203). There would be better evaluation questions that would lead to better evaluated answers. Further, there would be better information that is unlikely to be collected with the help of other research designs.

The researcher need to have a clear idea beforehand of the variables and how they would operate so that the study could be conducted in a predicted manner and the results could be verified systematically. There would be specific contexts in which the variables would or would not operate; rather, it would mean that if the study does not depict what had been thought of before, then it might be the case that some mechanism had not been thought of earlier or not have been predicted correctly.

Discourse Theory

No fact or investigation can be free of theory and therefore, the discourse analysis is one of the significant research designs used in various fields. In the given research topic, if discourse analysis is applied, then an interdisciplinary work needs to be framed out (Mogashoa, 2014, p. 105). It has also been argued that language plays an important role in such research designs, which means that the black women's topic need to probed into written and oral messages deeply so that the assistance of the programs could be investigated properly.

It is well-known that critical discourse analysis is used for analyzing social issues such as that in the given research topic, which is black women in white male dominant society. This, itself, is a social issue where it needs to be analyzed that what societal position black women have in a white male dominant society. Discourse analysis is also believed to provide higher awareness of the concealed motivations in people. Thus, it is expected that this analysis would provide concrete answers to even the complex questions, even if they are based on the societal topics like that in the given research topic.

Conclusion