Hypothetical Designs - Research Paper Example

Hypothetical research designs Abstract Research design is the plan or strategy which is formed to develop hypothesis for the research problem. Hypothetical research designs are mainly seen in case study form of research which requires analysis of behavioral and cultural aspect of the problem areas in the case study. In the field of virtual project management, where the project manager has the duty to manage a team of many people working in different parts of the country, he faces many challenges in this regards. These are the problems areas for which hypothesis is developed and accordingly data is collected to analyze the problem and find solutions for such issue. Quantitative design deal with collection of numeric data and presenting results in numeric format, whereas, qualitative design would deal with those data which cannot be measured in numbers, but they have great significance in the research. It can be suggested that a mixed design would be suitable in a situation like this. Table of Contents Hypothetical Research Design 3 Qualitative Design 4 Quantitative Design 5 References 7 Hypothetical Research Design There are many ways to conduct research. Research is used for describing, understanding, identifying and solving the problems in the society. Research design is also known as the blue print for the research. The research design of any study deals with four common areas of concern; they are the research question, the data available for the research, the relevant data for the research and the ways to analyze those collected data. The effectiveness of the research design depends on well formulated research questions and also on the efficiency of the researcher. All the research designs have positive and negative sides. It is important to develop a logical research design for enhancing the quality of the research project (Salkind, 2010, p. 1253-1254). In research design the research hypothesis is the prediction or the expectation that need to be tested by the researcher. Hypothesis is used in research to assume a precise description of the stated research question, which the researcher focuses on. Hypothesis generation is considered to be the most creative task within a research. In a research study a good hypothesis is considered to have such opportunities, which will help to uncover new ideas or knowledge for the researcher. If the researcher does not learn something new by the hypothesis developed with the help of research questions, then it would be futile (Grogan, 2005, p. 172-174). There are three types of research design; they are qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods. The quantitative and qualitative designs are not the extreme opposite form of research designs; rather they represent different areas of research. The mixed research method is the combination of both the methods, so it balances both. The general difference between qualitative and quantitative hypothesis is that the qualitative hypothesis includes closed-ended questions and quantitative hypothesis includes the use of numbers. The qualitative hypothesis includes exploring the social and human behavior in relation to the problem areas. The quantitative research method deals with testing the problems by analyzing the numbers, statistics or financial reports. It is logical and can help the researcher to prove his/ her results logically. The mixed method combines the philosophical assumptions as well as the facts and figures. There are two components that can be involved while developing a research design that is the philosophical assumptions and the distinct procedure. The philosophical assumptions include the worldwide study that has been conducted on the problems or topic and the distinct procedure involves the type of hypothesis used to develop the research design (Flick, Kardorff, and Steinke, 2004, p. 3). In this study, the problem areas are related to the issues in virtual project management. The project managers have to handle a team, which all the team member are working from different locations, just with the help of virtual project management tools. It is a challenging task to manage a team people working from different location, just with the help of technology. So the research questions in this study would include exploitation of project management resources, challenges in virtual project management systems, geographical barriers and role that it plays, etc. Now the research hypothesis would be developed based on these questions. The hypothesis would be developed to derive results from the questions developed. Qualitative Design The hypothetical research design is mainly seen in case study research. In the case study form of research, the research focus would be mainly on acquiring an in-depth knowledge of the phenomenon by studying the real-life situations. This can be done by firstly acquiring data and information from the available literature or resources. The qualitative research includes the strategies to study the cultural group and behavior of the human population by collecting primary data through observation, interviewing the respondents. The qualitative research process is much more flexible and it does not help in deriving accurate data from the research. It only focuses on the qualitative aspects of the research. No logical result can be derived, so qualitative form of research is not considered by many researchers. It generally includes case study research, and also narrative form of research (Deakin University, n. d., p. 5). In virtual project management, the project managers have the duty to co-ordinate and control his team members, though they are working from absolutely different locations. The researcher in this case has to conduct qualitative research for understanding the behavioral aspects within the team members, the team members with their manager and with the organization, as a whole. The leadership qualities, controlling and monitoring ability of the project manager and the challenges that the project manager might face due to conflicts within the team members are behavioral in natural and requires qualitative research. The research would also include opinion of the respondents from the organization, in relation to the performance of the virtual project tools. Quantitative Design The quantitative research design is considered to be formal, scientific, systematic and in numerical form. They are conducted by collecting data in form of figures or numbers. The results derived from qualitative form of research are usually expressed in the form of tables, charts. In the qualitative form of research, the cause and effect relationship is studies. The different types of quantitative research design are: experimental design and non-experimental design. The hypothesis developed in quantitative research design is usually analytical and predictive in nature because, there are figures available to prove the hypothesis. The hypothesis is designed to establish a cause and effect relationship. Researchers are interested in conducting quantitative research when they want to investigate the relation between the variables in some specific situation with the motive of solving the problem. The quantitative form of research is considered to be more valid and accurate. Quantitative research is considered to be scientific, organized, and systematic. It is defined as a systematic plan for gathering data and deriving results. The quantitative design focuses on the why, where, how, what, and when questions in a research study. In virtual projects, the utility of quantitative management is high because the performance of the project tools and also the human resource can be analyzed using quantitative form of research. The statistics derived from the project manager, relating to the measurable aspects in the project. It can be suggested that for conducting research on virtual project management, the researcher can use mixed research design, which would include both qualitative and quantitative research. References Deakin University. (no date). Research Design. Retrieved from: http://www.deakin.edu.au/buslaw/infosys/research/students/docs/research-design.pdf. Flick, U., Kardorff, E. V., and Steinke, I. (2004). Companion to Qualitative Research. London: Sage. Grogan, P. (2005). The Use of Hypotheses in Ecology. Retrieved from: http://post.queensu.ca/~groganp/Hypotheses%20in%20Ecology2foradobe.pdf. Salkind, N. J. (2010). Encyclopedia of Research Design. London: Sage. Read More