The Research Design Section: Fourteen Components
Fourteen components - the richest single list in the whole subject - including four design decisions that appear here and are taught nowhere in fourteen weeks.
The fourteen components, quoted
These sit in section 2 of the week's study notes, after eight components for the introduction and five for the literature review. The section's name moves around slightly: the notes' list of proposal sections calls it methods and methodology, while this component list is headed research design. Title your own section the way your guideline does.
Fourteen printed bullets. The source states no count, does not number them and offers no commentary on any one of them. The numbering used below is this library's, in the order printed.
Why the list is worth working through
The week states three learning objectives, and the first — decide on the process for writing your research proposal — is the first objective in the whole subject that the material delivers in full. This list is the main reason. It is concrete, it is specific to a design rather than to writing in general, and it is long enough to catch the omissions that sink a proposal at review.
Read it as a coverage check rather than as a template. A template would imply that the printed order is the writing order and that every item earns a paragraph; the source claims neither. What the list does reliably is tell you where a draft has a hole.
Eight families in fourteen items
The fourteen are printed in one flat sequence with no grouping and no headings. Grouping them makes the section easier to draft, because several items only make sense in pairs.
THE FOURTEEN, GROUPED (THIS LIBRARY'S GROUPING)
| Family | Components | What the family answers |
|---|---|---|
| Rationale and vocabulary | 1, 2 | Why this design, and what your terms mean inside it |
| What you will actually do | 3, 4 | The methods, the phases, and how the phases relate to each other |
| Where and when | 5, 6 | Study setting and time horizon — both named, neither explained |
| What has already happened | 7 | Pilot project information, and the results that shaped the design |
| Who or what you will study, and how you reach them | 8, 10 | Selection criteria including inclusions and exclusions, and how sources will be negotiated and accessed |
| Instruments and analysis | 11, 12 | Equipment, techniques, measures, scales and materials; and how the data will be analysed |
| What the design cannot do | 9 | Limitations — generalisability, experimental skews, definitional and purpose limitations |
| Conduct and cost | 13, 14 | Ethical considerations, and non-standard resource requirements |
The grouping is this library's. The source prints the fourteen flat, in the order quoted above, and draws no relationships between them.
Family one is load-bearing: a rationale saying one thing and methods doing another is the commonest reason a design section is sent back.
Four items the subject introduces and never explains
Four of the fourteen ask for a decision in vocabulary that appears here and nowhere else in the fourteen weeks of material. Each is set out below with the source's wording, what it asks you to decide, and what the subject supplies.
NAMED AND NOT TAUGHT
| Item, as printed | What it asks you to decide | What the subject supplies |
|---|---|---|
| “study setting – naturalistic or contrived” | Which of the two your study is | Neither term is defined anywhere in fourteen weeks. This is the only appearance of the distinction. |
| “time horizon – snapshot, longitudinal, retrospective, multiple points in time” | Which of four shapes your data collection takes over time | None of the four is defined. This is the only appearance of time horizon as a design decision. |
| “pilot project information and results that shaped the research design” | What a pilot has already told you, and how it changed the design | The pilot stage is named repeatedly across the subject and taught nowhere. |
| “experimental skews” | Which skews limit your design, inside item 9 | Used once, defined nowhere. |
The pilot item is the sharpest of the four because of what it assumes. It asks for “pilot project information and results that shaped the research design” — placing the pilot in the past, as something that has already happened and already changed the design, at the moment you are still writing the proposal. The subject supports that sequence nowhere. Its final week tells you to prepare by doing a pilot study; no week explains what a pilot study is, what it tests, or what you do with what it shows.
Limitations: anticipated here, encountered later
Item 9 requires “limitations of the research (generalisability, experimental skews, definitional and purpose limitations)” in the proposal. The same week's structure for the finished report places limitations in the discussion, where the qualitative report's discussion section is described as applying the findings to the research questions and highlighting the limitations of the study.
Both are correct in their own genre, and the source never says so. A limitation written in a proposal is anticipated: you already know your sample will come from one sector, that your window is short, that your definition of the construct is narrower than the field's. A limitation written in a report is encountered: the response rate was what it was, two sites withdrew, the instrument did not discriminate between the groups you cared about.
In the proposal (item 9)
- Anticipated, read off the design as drawn
- Generalisability limits implied by the sampling you have chosen
- Definitional and purpose limits you have set deliberately
- Written to show a reviewer you can see them coming
In the finished report (the discussion)
- Encountered, read off the study as it actually ran
- What in the end constrained the findings
- Departures from the design as proposed
- Written to bound what a reader may conclude
Selection and access: the pair a later chapter cannot reconstruct
Item 8 asks for “selection criteria for research participants/organisations/texts (sample selection, criteria for inclusions and exclusions)”. Read the three-way object carefully: participants, organisations or texts. A design whose unit of selection is documents — contracts, gate papers, incident reports — is covered by the same requirement as one that recruits people.
Item 10 asks for “information about the selection process (means by which information sources will be negotiated and accessed)”. That is the access route: who has to agree, in what order, and on what terms. In organisational research it usually has the longest lead time and changes most often after approval.
Ethics and resources, and where the week's two accounts agree
The notes' description of this section says it “explains how the research design fulfils the aims of the research or answers the research question, and addresses any ethical considerations or non-standard resource implications of the research process.” Items 13 and 14 are those two clauses, expanded. In material that contradicts itself as often as this week's does, that is worth saying plainly: here the section description and the component list line up exactly.
Item 13's parenthesis names harm to the researcher alongside harm to subjects. That matters directly if you are researching inside your own organisation and your findings will be read by people who control your work.
Item 14, “non-standard resource requirements”, is the last bullet and the one most often left blank. The source does not say what counts as standard, which in practice means anything your institution or sponsor would not assume: transcription, licensed software, translation, travel, participant reimbursement. See proposal timetable and resources.
Working the fourteen into a section
The source prints the fourteen in an order and does not say the printed order is the writing order. The sequence below is this library's, arranged so the decisions that constrain other decisions are made first.
A drafting sequence
Fix the rationale and the vocabulary (1, 2)
State the methodology the design rests on and define the terms specific to it. Everything after this has to be consistent with it.
Write what you will do, and in what phases (3, 4)
Methods first, then the phases and the relationship between them — whether a later phase depends on the output of an earlier one, or merely follows it.
Settle setting and time horizon in plain words (5, 6)
Where the work happens and over what period, stated so a reader who has never met those two terms can still picture it.
Report the pilot, or record that there was none (7)
What it told you and what you changed because of it. A blank reads as an omission; a sentence reads as a decision.
Specify selection and access together (8, 10)
Inclusion and exclusion criteria, then the route by which those sources will be reached and who has to agree.
Name the instruments and the analysis they feed (11, 12)
Equipment, techniques, measures, scales and materials, then how the resulting data will be analysed. A mismatch shows up here.
Close with limitations, ethics and resources (9, 13, 14)
These three are the feasibility case. They read badly as an afterthought and well as design decisions, which is what they are.
Checking the section
Before the design section goes to a reviewer
- Every one of the fourteen is present, or marked not applicable with a stated reason.
- The rationale in item 1 and the methods in item 3 are consistent — a reviewer reads them against each other first.
- Setting and time horizon are stated in plain words, not in a label you could not define if asked.
- The pilot item is answered, including where the answer is that none was conducted.
- Selection criteria name inclusions and exclusions, not only a sample size.
- The access route is written down while you can still remember it.
- The limitations are the ones this design creates, not generic ones that would fit any study.
- The ethics item is answered, the clearance path fits the timeline, and non-standard resources are named.
What to carry forward
- Fourteen printed components, covering rationale through to resources. The source states no count; fourteen is this library's count of the printed bullets.
- Four of them — study setting, time horizon, pilot results and experimental skews — rest on terms the subject introduces here and defines nowhere. State the decision in plain words rather than borrowing a definition your reviewer may not share.
- Limitations belong in the proposal as anticipated and in the report as encountered. The source requires both and never distinguishes them.
- Selection criteria and the access route are the two items a methods chapter cannot reconstruct after the fact. Write them down and keep them current.
- Walk the list against a draft rather than writing to it as a template. The items you cannot mark either way are decisions you have not made yet.
Frequently asked questions
Is fourteen the right number of components?
Fourteen is the number of bullets printed in the list, counted by this library. The source states no count and does not number them, so nothing turns on the figure — it is a reference convenience, not a specification. What matters is that every printed bullet is answered or consciously set aside.
What does “study setting – naturalistic or contrived” mean?
The supplied material does not say. Neither term is defined anywhere in fourteen weeks, and this is the only place the distinction appears, so this library does not supply a definition from elsewhere. Describe where the work will happen and under whose normal operating conditions; if your own guideline defines the terms, use its definitions and cite it.
Do I need to have run a pilot study before submitting the proposal?
Item 7 asks for pilot information and results that shaped the design, which places a pilot before the proposal. No week of the material explains what a pilot study is or what it should test, so this is a requirement without instruction. If no pilot has been run, say so in the section rather than leaving the item silent, and settle the expectation with your supervisor.
Do limitations go in the proposal or in the report?
Both, for different reasons. This list requires them in the proposal, where they are anticipated from the design as drawn; the same week's report structure places them in the discussion of the finished report, where they are encountered from the study as it ran. The source never distinguishes the two, so the work of writing the differences rather than repeating the paragraph is yours.
Is the printed order the order I should write in?
The source does not say. It prints a flat list with no grouping and no sequence. This page suggests a drafting order that puts rationale and vocabulary first because everything else has to be consistent with them, but that ordering is this library's, not a requirement.
Does this replace the research design section page drawn from the earlier week?
No. The subject specifies this section twice, in two different weeks, at two different levels of detail, and this library carries both accounts. This one is substantially fuller. Where the two differ, decide which specification your proposal is written to and say so.
References and source attribution
- The supplied teaching source: week 13 study notes titled “Writing up your research proposal” and the accompanying slide deck, from a master's-level research methods subject in project management. Author, institution and year are not stated in the supplied files.
- The week's set reading is given in the supplied material only as a four-page range in a textbook that is never given an author, title or year anywhere in the fourteen weeks of material.
- A student researcher's toolkit accompanying a methods textbook, 2012, publisher's website — the source of the do's and don'ts checklist reproduced in the subject's final week, which names doing a pilot study without explaining it.
- O'Leary, Z. 2017, The Essential Guide to Doing Your Research Project, 3rd ed., Sage Publications, London — among the works cited in the supplied source's weekly reference lists.
- Bryman, A. 2016, Social Research Methods, 5th ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford — among the works cited in the supplied source's weekly reference lists.
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- List the fourteen research design components and help me mark each one present, absent or not applicable for my project.
- Which terms in this material's research design list are used without ever being defined?
- Help me write the selection criteria and access route for a study inside my own organisation.
- What is the difference between the limitations I write in a proposal and the limitations I write in the discussion?
- Show me how the research design components map onto the four questions a proposal has to answer for its reviewers.