Seventeen Worked Research Designs in Project Management
Seventeen master's projects that were designed, run, examined and published. Read as a set, they show what a finishable project management research design actually looks like — and how narrow the range of methods really is.
What this page is, and the constraint it works under
The exemplar volume is a published, edited collection of master's degree research projects in project management. It runs to seventeen chapters arranged in four parts, and it is the only body of completed project management research designs in this library's source material.
Its value is specific. Teaching material tells you what a research design should be. This volume shows you what seventeen part-time practitioner researchers, working under real time and access limits, actually built — and got through examination.
How to read a design summary
A design summary is only useful if you interrogate it the same way each time. Four questions do most of the work, and they map onto the layers the supplied teaching source uses to describe a research project.
FOUR QUESTIONS TO PUT TO EVERY DESIGN BELOW
| Question | What you are looking for | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| What narrowed the scope? | Usually a literature review, sometimes a document review or an existing model | The source treats the literature review as what justifies the study and focuses the question. Several abstracts say so explicitly. |
| What is the methodology? | The strategy of the study — case study, survey, modelling, phenomenological analysis | The middle tier of the methodological pyramid. Many abstracts name methods and never name a methodology. |
| What are the collection methods? | Interviews, questionnaires, documents, records, simulation output | The apex tier. Keeping this distinct from methodology is the single most common confusion in practitioner research. |
| What is the claim at the end? | A description, an explanation, an evaluation, a tool, a benchmark or a negative finding | Determines what the design had to be capable of. A tool as an output requires a different design from a description. |
The four layers are the source's; the four questions are framed for this page. See the five basic elements and the methodological pyramid for the underlying structure.
If those four terms are not yet stable for you, The Five Basic Elements of a Research Project sets them out in the source's own words, and The Methodological Pyramid shows how the layers stack.
Part One — People and organisations
Four studies about the people who deliver projects rather than about the projects themselves. All four collect primary data from practitioners, and three of the four use two collection methods rather than one.
STUDIES 1-4 — DESIGN AS STATED IN THE PUBLISHED ABSTRACT
| Study | Subject | Design as stated | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Integrating younger practitioners into the project management profession | Literature review used to narrow the scope into aims and objectives; primary data from a short web-based survey of about ten minutes, plus one-on-one interviews conducted in person and by telephone. Output includes a maturity-scale assessment tool. | Not labelled |
| 2 | Inter-generational differences in project management tools and techniques | Mixed qualitative and quantitative. Interview transcripts compared against survey results and triangulated through the literature review. | Mixed, stated |
| 3 | Management challenges with a fly-in/fly-out workforce | Exploratory. Thirty-one current fly-in/fly-out workers interviewed; data analysed using a qualitative phenomenological methodology. | Qualitative, stated |
| 4 | The human side of project management — human psychology in project risk management | Questionnaire plus face-to-face interviews with project managers and project team members. | Not labelled |
Study 1 is the clearest illustration in the volume of the literature review doing structural work. The abstract says the review narrowed the scope into aims and objectives — that is the source's own account of what a review is for, visible in a finished project.
Study 3 is the only design in the volume that names a methodology from the interpretive family and applies it to a stated number of interviews. It is worth noting what it does not do: it makes no attempt at a representative sample of the workforce, because a phenomenological design is not trying to generalise. The design fits the claim.
Study 2 is the only abstract in the volume that uses the word triangulated. Interview transcripts are compared against survey results and both are checked against the literature review — three lines of evidence on one question. That is more analytical machinery than most of the volume carries, and it is worth noticing that the third line is the literature, which costs nothing extra to obtain.
Study 4 states its population precisely: project managers and project team members. Studying both sides of the same relationship is a small design decision with large consequences, because it lets a difference between the two groups become a finding rather than a confound.
Part Two — Methodologies and practice domains
Six studies, and the widest methodological range in the volume. This part contains the only computational design, the only design built around an explicit maturity model, and the clearest single-organisation case study.
STUDIES 5-10 — DESIGN AS STATED IN THE PUBLISHED ABSTRACT
| Study | Subject | Design as stated | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Knowledge management in defence projects | Small-scale survey of elite respondents in the project management field. | Not labelled |
| 6 | Influence of procurement practices on project risk in construction | Single-organisation case study covering multiple large construction projects, with a supporting literature review. The case study method was primarily interviews with procurement specialists. | Case study |
| 7 | Agile principles applied to brownfield mining capacity projects | Review of published works from 1986 to 2014 to identify trends and interconnections; twelve practitioners surveyed; one practitioner interviewed to validate the theories presented. | Not labelled |
| 8 | Use of mobile technology by project managers | Two methods: a document review process, and a survey questionnaire issued to project managers. | Not labelled |
| 9 | Improving project performance by adopting control theory methods | Modelling and simulation. A sample project modelled as a transfer function in a numerical computing environment, then simulated so results could be compared. | Computational |
| 10 | Project risk management practices in defence SMEs | Survey methodology, with a parallel review of major defence project performance data for context. Survey findings mapped to a risk management maturity model. | Not labelled |
Study 5 is the shortest design statement in the volume and the most instructive about scale. "Small-scale survey of elite respondents" is a defensible master's design: a small number of people who are hard to reach and know a great deal, rather than a large number who are easy to reach and know a little.
Study 7 shows a pattern worth copying — a substantial review of published work over a defined period, a modest survey, and then a single validating interview. The interview is not there for volume; it is there to test whether the theory assembled from the literature survives contact with one experienced practitioner.
Study 9 is the outlier. It collects no data from people at all: a project is modelled as a transfer function and simulated. It is the only design in the volume where the evidence is generated rather than gathered, and it sits well outside the survey-and-interview centre of gravity.
Part Three — Issues in application
The shortest part of the volume, and the one whose abstracts state the most about their results. Two of the three combine a survey with interviews; the third pairs a comparison of delivery methods with a structured questionnaire.
STUDIES 11-13 — DESIGN AS STATED IN THE PUBLISHED ABSTRACT
| Study | Subject | Design as stated | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Project management in the arts | Online survey plus in-depth interviews. | Not labelled |
| 12 | Effective management of infrastructure projects in a remote region | Literature review to determine challenges and strategies; data collected from core project team members by online survey and interviews. Thirteen challenges identified from the literature, of which nine scored high or extreme risk. | Not labelled |
| 13 | Integrated project delivery in large-scale residential architecture | Comparison of delivery methods, plus a survey of fifty-two industry professionals using structured web-based questionnaires. | Structured instrument |
Study 12 is the clearest worked chain in the volume from literature to instrument to finding. The review produced thirteen candidate challenges; the fieldwork scored them; nine came back high or extreme. The design's logic is visible in the numbers: the literature supplied the items, and the practitioners supplied the weights.
Study 13 states its sample size, which most of the abstracts do not. Fifty-two industry professionals surveyed by structured web-based questionnaire is a realistic scale (the abstract reports the number surveyed, not a response count) for a practitioner researcher with industry contacts, and small enough that the claims have to be worded carefully.
Study 11 is the leanest design in this part — an online survey and in-depth interviews, with no stated review step in the abstract. It is a reminder that a sector with a thin research literature changes the shape of the project: there may be little published work to narrow the scope with, and the primary data has to carry more of the argument.
Part Four — Continuous improvement and benchmarking
Four studies concerned with measuring practice against something — a maturity model, another organisation, a published body of execution strategy, or the literature's own assumptions. Two are labelled case studies in their titles.
STUDIES 14-17 — DESIGN AS STATED IN THE PUBLISHED ABSTRACT
| Study | Subject | Design as stated | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | Establishing and benchmarking project management maturity | Explore existing maturity models and select one; survey a sample of employees at the subject organisation using the selected model; establish a baseline; benchmark against organisations of similar size; identify gaps and recommend improvements. Presented as a case study model other organisations could follow. | Model-based |
| 15 | Impact of modular construction on LNG megaprojects | Examination of published works to identify differences in execution strategies and known causes of overruns; data gathered by surveying and interviewing experienced industry participants. | Not labelled |
| 16 | Process improvement in a remote construction project | Review of existing literature on process improvement, plus a qualitative, opinion-based survey of professionals working in the sector. | Qualitative, stated |
| 17 | Implementation of a continuous improvement programme in an engineering firm | A series of interviews with those involved at working level, deliberately taking a bottom-up perspective rather than the top-down approach common in the available literature. The programme was not successfully implemented within the research timeframe; the research reports on why. | Interview-based |
Study 14 is the most transferable design in the volume, and says so: it presents itself as a case study model other organisations could follow. The sequence — select an existing model, survey against it, baseline, benchmark, identify gaps, recommend — is a template rather than a one-off.
Study 17 is the most important one to read if you are anxious about your own project. Its subject failed to be implemented inside the research window, and the study reports on why. It also states its standpoint openly: bottom-up rather than the top-down view common in the literature.
Studies 15 and 16 both start from published work and then go to practitioners, but they ask different things of the literature. Study 15 uses it to identify differences in execution strategies and known causes of overruns — the literature supplies the phenomenon. Study 16 uses it to establish what process improvement is taken to mean before surveying opinion about it — the literature supplies the vocabulary.
The pattern across all seventeen
Set side by side, the seventeen designs are far less varied than the methodological pyramid's fourteen methodologies and thirteen collection methods would suggest. The matrix below records what each abstract states.
COLLECTION METHODS STATED IN THE SEVENTEEN ABSTRACTS
| Study | Review of existing material | Survey / questionnaire | Interview | Case study framing | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | Maturity-scale tool as output |
| 2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | Triangulation stated |
| 3 | — | — | Yes | — | Phenomenological analysis |
| 4 | — | Yes | Yes | — | — |
| 5 | — | Yes | — | — | Elite respondents |
| 6 | Yes | — | Yes | Yes | Multiple projects, one organisation |
| 7 | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | Single validating interview |
| 8 | Yes | Yes | — | — | Document review |
| 9 | — | — | — | — | Modelling and simulation |
| 10 | Yes | Yes | — | — | Mapped to a maturity model |
| 11 | — | Yes | Yes | — | — |
| 12 | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | Risk scoring of literature-derived items |
| 13 | Yes | Yes | — | — | Comparison of delivery methods |
| 14 | Yes | Yes | — | Yes | Benchmarking against peer organisations |
| 15 | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | — |
| 16 | Yes | Yes | — | Yes | Opinion-based survey |
| 17 | — | — | Yes | Yes | Negative result reported |
Compiled for this page from the published abstracts. Where an abstract is silent, the cell is silent — several studies may have done more than the abstract records.
- Survey and interview dominate. Between them they account for the primary data in every design except the computational one.
- Almost every design pairs a review of existing published material with one or two primary collection methods. The review narrows; the primary data answers.
- Seven designs use survey and interview together, usually with the interviews adding reasons to results the survey has counted.
- Two studies are explicitly labelled case studies in their titles; a third describes itself as a single-organisation case study and a fourth presents itself as a case study model.
- One design is purely computational, generating its evidence by simulation rather than gathering it.
- One design reports a negative result — the programme under study was not implemented in the research window — and reports on why.
The stated sample sizes are worth holding on to, because they set a realistic ceiling. Thirty-one interviews in the fly-in/fly-out study, a survey of fifty-two industry professionals in the integrated delivery study, twelve practitioners surveyed and one interviewed in the agile study. These are illustrative figures from individual studies, not targets or standards.
What the volume never uses
The methodological pyramid in the supplied teaching source names fourteen methodologies and thirteen data collection methods. Laid against the seventeen abstracts, most of that map is untouched.
THE PYRAMID'S LABELS AGAINST WHAT THE ABSTRACTS STATE
| Pyramid tier | Appears in the volume | Never appears in these abstracts |
|---|---|---|
| Research methodologies (14 labels) | Survey, extensively. Case study, in four designs. Documentary analysis and archival research are arguably present in the document review and the review of published performance data, though neither abstract uses those terms. | Experimental design, ethnography, action research, grounded theory, content analysis, discourse analysis, textual analysis, semiotics, image-based research, feminist research |
| Data collection methods (13 labels) | Questionnaires and interviews, in almost every design. Documents, records and archives in two. Scales appear as maturity models and risk scoring rather than as a named method. | Observation, focus groups, projective techniques, images, vignettes, life history, narrative, diaries |
| Fundamental philosophies (8 labels) | None is named in any abstract. One design names a qualitative phenomenological methodology, which sits in the interpretive family. | Positivism, constructionism, interpretivism, functionalism, critical theory, feminism, post structuralism, post modernism — as declared positions |
Compiled for this page. An abstract is not a methodology chapter; a philosophy declared in the chapter body would not appear here.
Two readings of that table are available and both are worth holding. The first is practical: surveys and interviews are what a working practitioner can actually run part-time, and the volume reflects that constraint honestly. The second is a warning: a field that reaches for the same two instruments every time will keep answering the same shape of question. The full label set is set out in The Methodology Catalogue.
Using the seventeen to scope your own design
The volume is most useful as a scoping instrument. It shows you the size of thing that gets finished, and it shows you the small number of structural patterns those things fall into.
Matching your question to a pattern in the volume
The selection procedure that sits behind these patterns is set out in Choosing a Research Methodology, and the design decisions that follow are in Step 5: Designing Your Research.
Benchmarking your design against the seventeen
- Does a review of existing published material narrow your scope into stated aims and objectives, as in most of these designs?
- Do you have one or two primary collection methods, not four?
- If you are running both a survey and interviews, is it clear which one counts and which one explains?
- Is your stated sample within the range these studies achieved — tens, not hundreds?
- Have you named the methodology, not just the instruments?
- Could your study still be written up if the thing you are studying does not happen, as in Study 17?
- Does your output type — description, evaluation, tool, benchmark — match a design in the volume that produced the same kind of output?
Designs documented at full length
The seventeen designs above are paraphrased from published abstracts, which is why each is a paragraph rather than a chapter. A later batch of source material supplied five complete research works — two doctoral theses, a portfolio thesis, a journal paper and a conference paper — which can be read at a depth an abstract cannot reach.
Those five show instrument design, sampling, analysis choices, limitations and appendices in full: Thesis structures compared, Mixed methods design, Survey design and response rates in practice, Interview design in project research and Risk scoring with RFMEA.
What to carry forward
- Seventeen finished, examined and published designs, all summarised here from published abstracts only. Silence in a summary means silence in the abstract.
- The real method range is narrow: survey, interview, review of existing material, and one computational design.
- The dominant structure is a review that narrows the scope into aims and objectives, followed by one or two primary collection methods.
- Stated sample sizes are in the tens. Treat them as illustrations of what practitioners achieved, never as a standard to hit.
- Two studies are labelled case studies in their titles; a further two use case study framing. Case study is the most common way of bounding a single-setting project.
- A study whose subject fails can still be examined and published. Design so a negative result is still an answer.
- None of the counts on this page is a statistic. They describe one volume and generalise to nothing.
Frequently asked questions
Why are the studies referred to by number instead of by author?
This library names no authors, editors, institutions or publishers. The numbers follow the volume's own chapter running order, so a study referred to here as Study 12 is the twelfth chapter in the collection. Each is also identified by subject, which is usually enough to locate it.
Can I use these summaries as citations in my own literature review?
No. They are paraphrases of published abstracts, compiled for orientation. If a design is relevant to your work, find the original chapter and cite that, reading the methodology and limitations sections rather than the abstract alone.
Is the survey-plus-interview pattern the safest choice?
It is the most common in this volume, which means precedents are easy to find and supervisors will recognise it. That is not the same as safest. It commits you to two instruments, two ethics considerations and two analysis approaches, and the source is explicit that the methods you choose depend on the questions you want to answer.
What sample size should I aim for?
The supplied source sets no target and neither does the volume. The figures that appear in these abstracts — thirty-one interviews, a survey of fifty-two industry professionals, twelve practitioners surveyed — are what individual studies achieved, not standards. Size follows from the claim you intend to make and the access you can actually obtain.
One study reports that the thing it was studying never happened. How was that publishable?
Because the research question was answered. The study reports on why the programme was not implemented within the timeframe, which is a finding about implementation. The supplied source's account of drawing conclusions covers data that contradicts the literature as well as data that supports it.
Do these designs cover the whole of project management research?
No. They are seventeen studies published together in one collection. Whole methodological families named on the methodological pyramid — ethnography, action research, discourse analysis, archival research — do not appear here at all. Absence from this volume says nothing about their suitability for your question.
References and source attribution
- An edited volume of master's degree research projects in project management, 2018, academic publisher, 378 pp. — the exemplar volume. All seventeen design summaries on this page are paraphrased from the published abstracts; chapter bodies were not reproduced.
- The supplied teaching source: consolidated week 2 and week 3 teaching notes and slide material on research methods and developing a research topic, used for the four-layer framework applied to each design.
- Quinlan, C. 2011, Business Research Methods, 1st ed., Cengage Publishing. Chapter 1, p. 50 — the methodological pyramid used here to separate methodology from collection method.
- Clarke, R. J. 2005, Research methods and methodologies, pp. 35–45 — the work the supplied teaching source adapts for its methodology definitions.
- O'Leary, Z. 2017, The Essential Guide to Doing Your Research Project, 3rd ed., Sage Publications, London.
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- Which of the seventeen designs is closest in shape to the question I want to ask?
- Show me every design in the volume that combines a survey with interviews, and what each used the interviews for.
- Build a design outline for my study following the pattern of the maturity benchmarking study.
- What do these abstracts leave out that I would need before committing to a similar design?
- How would I write up my project if the initiative I am studying is not completed in time?