Review of Quantitative Research Designs - Assignment Example

Quantitative Research Designs al Affiliation What type of research situation would involve the use of descriptive statistics?Research may involve different quantitative research designs. However, some situations may require that descriptive statistics be solely applied to derive significant information. Descriptive statistics may be best for a research situation that requires a pattern be established from a set of data (Christensen, Johnson, and Turner, 2011). It is simply a means of describing the data to provide insight into the research.

For example, establishing the rate of drug abuse in the society can be a daunting task. Descriptive statistics is used to illustrate the patterns of drug abuse within specific age groups. It is estimated that approximately 24 million teenage Americans, 9% of the entire population engage in drug abuse. Such research requires descriptive statistics to establish the trends and provide a visual impression of the research (Black, 1999). The research was conducted on a population to describe the data in relation to drug abuse.2. Describe a research topic you might study using an experimental, quasi-experimental, or ex-post facto design.

An experimental research design can be applied when trying out a new technology in the public transport system. For example, attempting to see how commuters using public transport would respond to an easy pay system; pre-paid cards fitted with a magnetic chip and can be used as a means of payment in buses. An experimental research design would be appropriate for such a research situation because the research is subject to manipulation, control, random selection, and random assignment (Vogt, 2007).

The above-mentioned characteristics of experimental research design indicate that the researcher can obtain as much information as possible due to the ease of control of the research topic. The research question would be: How will people respond to the easy pay system and the number of people that would recommend it. The independent variable will be the response (excited, satisfied, and not sure) while the dependent variable will be the number of commuters who recommend the system.ReferencesBlack, T. R. (1999).

Doing quantitative research in the social sciences: An integrated approach to research design, measurement and statistics. London, England: Sage Publications.Christensen, L. B., Johnson, R. B., & Turner, L. A. (2011). Research methods, design, and analysis (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.Vogt, W. P. (2007). Quantitative research methods for professionals. Boston, MA: Pearson.