Research design
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Date: Monday 17 July 2006
Venue: Arumugam Building, 1st floor
Time: 3.30 - 5.30
Title: Research design Slides
Who is this session for? PhD students and new researchers who are planning a research project
Key speaker: Professor David de Vaus, La Trobe University, Australia
The session: Research design is about the architecture of a research project. Developing an appropriate design is the crucial first step in structuring both quantitative and qualitative research projects so that the data collected are capable of answering the research question in a convincing way. But despite the fundamental importance of research design, investigators frequently do not explicitly work through this stage and subsequently discover that their data does not meet their needs.
This session will outline four major classes of research design that are relevant to both qualitative and quantitative projects. It will consider some of the strengths and weaknesses of these designs and consider how to select an appropriate design.
The session will consist of a lecture component and will also include the opportunity to develop and evaluate research designs for some research problems. It is expected that participants will actively contribute to building and evaluating these research design exemplars.
About the speaker:
David de Vaus conducts research in family sociology, family demography, ageing and retirement and life course transitions. He is author of a number of books including Letting Go: Relationships between adults and their parents (1994 Oxford); Diversity and Change in Australian Families (2004), Surveys in Social Research (1986-2002), Research Design in Social Research (Sage 2001); Analysing Social Science Data (Sage 2002) and has edited 4 volume collections on Social Surveys (Sage 2002) and on Research Design (Sage 2006). He is currently involved in three main research projects on Healthy Retirement, Living Alone and Cohabitation. For more information see http://www.latrobe.edu.au/socsci/staff/devaus/devaus.htm
