Blog Post 7

What are your thoughts on research designs after tonight’s class? How important is identifying an appropriate research design for your study? What types of research designs are you considering for your study and why? Notate a research design that is consistent with the goals of your study.

After our class lecture and reading through all of the options in Rubin and Babbie text I realized that I had many options. I was tempted a few times to change my research proposal to match a research design that sounded maybe more interesting, more fun, more realistic. I wrote notes as I read through Chapter 12 so I could go back and review them once I really had to make a decision about my design.

I looked at the one-group pretest – post-test, but then read that is does not account for several threats to internal validity so I moved on. I also considered the pretest-post test control group design but I made a note that maybe it was too rigorous and not the best match for my research proposal. When I read the description for the nonequivalent comparison groups design, I wrote, “yes, this seems applicable!” I started to think through how I could identity two similar groups. I also read that this was similar to the pretest post test control group design but without the random assignment. So I decided to choose this design.

This is the shorthand notation and customized by adding the third row:

Group 1          O_{1          X}              O₂

 Group 2          O₁                          O₂

 Group 3          O_{1          X}              O₂

I talk about my research proposal whenever I see my cousin who is working on a research project for her PhD in public health. We’ve taken several socially distanced hikes over the past month and we talk about my proposal and her research. After I described what I was doing she suggested I add the third row – so Group 1 gets the intervention with a social worker, Group 3 gets no intervention and the Group 3 will get an information packet about social service resources. This will provide me more data about the impact of the intervention.

I made myself stop worrying about picking the perfect design and just commit and think through the research protocol and survey instrument(s). As I’ve written in previous posts, I remind myself often that this is a learning experience.