Designing your study

Qualitative research allows you to understanding how your research topic could potentially be transferred to another context. Your data could be anything from a short response to an open-ended questionnaire question to an hour-long transcribed interview or focus group.

Quantitative research uses numbers, such as routine statistics, to develop your understanding of a research topic. 

Mixed-methods research collects and analyses qualitative and quantitative data within the same study.

Below some resources to help you decide whether a qualitative, quantitative or mixed- methods approach is best for your project.

• Guidance on how to choose a research method from the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) is a flowchart to help you decide on the best research method for your project.
• Online learning resources from the NCRM includes video tutorials and supporting materials.
• Guidance on doing qualitative research from the American Library Association (ALA) includes resources on underlying concepts, methods and software.
• Guidance on doing quantitative research from the ALA includes how to design quantitative research projects, analyse their data and present this data in a meaningful way.

Good questionnaire design is important for securing high quality data to enable accurate data analysis. Questionnaires can include:

• open questions, which typically prompt qualitative data collection and analysis
• closed questions, which typically prompt quantitative data collection and analysis

If you want to use a questionnaire to collect data, it’s generally recommended that you use a tried and tested or pre-validated questionnaire. These will be have been evaluated to confirm they’re collecting or measuring what they’re intended to; you may have found examples of pre-validated questionnaires when you were reviewing the literature.

Alternatively, below are some sources to assist in developing your own questionnaire.

• Guidance on questionnaire design from the University of Leeds on the designing and administering of questionnaires.
• Guidance on good survey design from the New Zealand Government highlights issues you might encounter when planning, undertaking, commissioning, managing, and processing a survey or survey data.
• Survey research guidance from Research Methods Knowledge Base is an online textbook that includes an overview of survey types, selecting the best survey method for you and question design.

Involving service users is now common in all stages of research, not only as research participants but also as researchers. 

INVOLVE is a National Institute for Health Research funded initiative to support active public involvement in NHS research, provides detailed guides on how to involve users in your research.

Sampling is used when it’s not possible or practical to include the entire research population in your project. There are many types of sampling including:

• probability sampling, when you’re seeking a sample that is representative of the wider population
• random sampling, when every person in the population has an equal chance of being selected
• purposive sampling, when you rely on your judgment about who will participate in your study

Below are some online guides to find out more about sampling.

• Practical guidance on sampling from the National Audit Office is an accessible online guide to sampling techniques.
• Sampling guidance on the Research Methods Knowledge Base gives an overview of sampling including sampling terminology and distinguishing between types of sampling.

There are 2 basic types of statistical analysis, descriptive and inferential.

• Descriptive statistics can help you summarise and describe the results of your research, including basic frequency reporting, numerical calculations, graphs or tables.
• Inferential statistics make inferences or predictions based on the data you’ve collected.

When it comes to statistical analysis, it may be helpful to get statistical advice as part of your research project. Below are some resources to get you started with statistical analysis:

• Getting started guidance from JASP is an open source statistics package. It provides a basic introduction to types of data you’re likely to use in statistical analysis.
• The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) glossary of statistical terms is a comprehensive list of terms you may encounter or need to use when undertaking statistical analysis.
• Guidance on statistics and statistical methods from the Researching Librarian is a blog post of statistics related web resources helpful for librarians doing research.
• Guidance on statistical terms in sampling on the Research Methods Knowledge Base is an overview of statistical terms related to sampling.
• Statistical methods for the information professional: a practical, painless approach to understanding, using and interpreting statistics offers accessible insights into potential difficult concepts.

It’s increasingly common to pre-register a study, sharing your research plan with the goal of improving the quality and transparency of studies and, in the case of reviews, avoiding duplication.

• Open Science Framework (OSF) is maintained by the Center for Open Science (COS) and provides a place to document and archive study designs, materials, and data. This is particularly relevant for quantitative studies.
• PROSPERO: International prospective register of systematic reviews – a place to pre-register your systematic review protocol.

Data sharing aims to facilitate maximum benefits of research data to the widest possible community. The aim behind data sharing is to make your data discoverable for potential reuse while respecting the confidentiality and privacy of research participants. Increasingly, journals, publishers and funding bodies require data underpinning research to be deposited in an accessible repository. More information on data sharing can be found using the below resources.

• DataCite is a non-profit international organisation building a community around a common standard for identifying and sharing data.
• Guidance on research data policy by UK Research and Innovation is aimed at Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded projects. This policy is a useful for key issues related to research data including copyright, confidentiality, security and ethics.

It’s important to start thinking about how you plan to disseminate your findings earlier in your project than you might imagine. It will inform other decisions, like what you’ll need to report, the notes you’ll need to keep to inform that reporting, and the level of detail you’ll be expected to present.

The Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research (EQUATOR) Network provides a comprehensive set of reporting guidelines you can follow for most study designs.

If you’re writing a book or journal article, you’ll need to think about the type of access you want for your work. Are you planning to submit to a publisher, perhaps one working with a professional association who uses its revenue to fund professional activities?

This is likely to mean a period of subscriber-only access to your work to protect the income stream. Alternatively, are you planning on publishing in an open access journal that makes content available immediately but may require upfront funding from you?

If your project received external funding there may be funder expectations to make your findings available through open access.

Plan S advocates for all publicly funded projects to be published in open access journals.

SHERPA Juliet lists the open access requirements of over 150 worldwide funding bodies.

There are a variety of open access options available when disseminating your findings including self-archiving.

• An Introduction to Open Access by JISC provides a good introduction to the variety of open access models available.
• The Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ) lists 12 000 open access journals including 20 library journals. Not all journals are published in English.
• Open Access Jargon Buster developed by Hannah Pyman at Exeter University, based on a poster developed by Sarah Humphreys, Bodleian Social Science Library, Oxford.
• Sherpa Romeo summarises copyright and open access archiving policies for publishers around the world.

The NHS seeks to develop innovations that can lead to improved interventions and better services for health and social care. These innovations are covered by the term intellectual property (IP).