Research and design methodologies and applications

Designing effective research for the purpose of studying administrative or policy issues can be a difficult task. An effective research design elicits the information and data necessary for the researcher to conclude certain results and findings that are both valid and reliable. Theoretically a research design will provide the researcher with efficient tools and a methodology that will be efficient and effective. However, theories are not always practical when it comes to administrative, policy or social concerns.

One expert recently wrote "it is important to know that one model may not meet the needs of every locality" (Cimino, 2008, p. 19) and this is true regarding whether to use qualitative, quantitative or mixed research as well. The vast majority of time administrative problems arise because people view events with such diversity. Research that attempts to quantify qualitative findings is oftentimes much more difficult than theory would imagine.

There are some advantages to using quantitative research including the fact that quantitative figures don't often lie, they are real. When assessing qualitative feelings regarding policies or social problems a quantitative response allows the respondent to express those feelings in a numeric manner. Quantitative aspects of a research study will often include the fact that the study will have a control group and a comparison group, and that both groups will be chosen randomly from society. One of the problems with this type of approach is the fact that a researcher will have no clue as to who he is getting to participate in the research. He could be drawing from a large community of citizens who all feel that the current policy being researched is a bunch of bunk.

At the same time, a different group of citizens could have the exact opposite perception. Using quantitative figures in a qualitative atmosphere such as what can often be found in studies focusing on administrative, social or policy issues at least allows the researcher to quantify the participant's responses. This type of research is called mixed research and means that the study is "both qualitative and quantitative" (Zha, Kelly, Park, Fitzgerald, 2006, ab). This type of approach employs aspects of both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies.

There is also the question of reliability in certain research methodologies and the validity of the numbers. Determining how reliable the responses are in any particular study can be very fractious in the overall results. A quantitative study will often test the same individual with a pre-test and a post-test. Reliability usually refers to that person scoring approximately the same on each test again and again. The question that comes into play when testing the same individual concerning policy, social or administrative issues are that those issues are normally known as qualitative not quantitative. In other words, the individual could change his/her mind. The results are therefore skewed based on the person's perception at that particular moment in time.

The general benefits of conducting a qualitative study is that it provides a deeper understanding of the motivational aspects of the subjects while also allowing the researcher to generate new hypothesis from the data, but quantifying those feelings are a subject much more difficult to address. Qualitative research also provides the opportunity to examine the breadth and depth of a phenomena and a study of behavior in natural environments.

The qualitative researcher is armed with questions and thoughts in order to explore the differences in thoughts, perceptions and feeling during the study process. The researcher could then conduct in-depth interviews of the students asking them to reply to various questions that seek to determine their thoughts, feelings observations and perceptions. The conclusions may, or may not agree with the description provided at the beginning of the study. One of the advantages of the qualitative study is that there oftentimes there are no groupings needed, but a quantitative study oftentimes does require groupings in order to quantify the results. A practical concern faced by the quantitative researcher who is attempting to study policy or social issues is; how does the researcher keep out the natural bias that is found when talking about social problems?