Choosing an appropriate research design to adopt should be the first thing you want to do before starting an academic research endeavor. This can also be referred to as research strategy or the pattern of questioning your research objectives. It determines how data will be collected and analyzed in research.

Your strategy could be either of the following;

Quantitative Research (an objective research strategy): This means that the respondents would be carried along. Here closed ended Questionnaires will be more suitable in collecting data.

Qualitative Research (a subjective research strategy): It involves open ended questionnaires. You more often may prefer adopting interview as a means of collecting data under qualitative research.

Determine the research approach you plan adopting. This includes your approach for collecting data. Data can be collected directly in the field (primary data collection) or from the internet (secondary data collection). This is where you get to decide whether to apply the survey approach, case study approach, problem solving approach or experiment.

The survey approach deals with collecting data from a large population within a short time. The survey approach covers both descriptive and analytical surveys.

Case study approach is used when the researcher plans to support his/her argument by carrying out an in-depth analysis of the subject matter. This type of research focuses on only one aspect of a problem.

Problem solving approach is used if the researcher identifies problems and tries to introduce changes to improve the situation and periodically evaluates the effect of changes he had introduced. This type of research is basically for professionals in a particular field of practice e.g., teaching, architecture, engineering etc.

Experiment approach is used if the researcher wants to check whether a particular research process can produce a desired material strength.

Above helps you decide on the appropriate research design to adopt in your project/dissertation.