4.2 Types of Research Design

The classic designs in legal research (the exam's catalogue): The exploratory design — the first map of unmapped terrain (the preliminary inquiry; the flexible, hypothesis-generating study); The descriptive design — the faithful portrait (the survey of bail practice: what the judges do — no causal claim); The explanatory (causal) design — the why beneath the what (the causes of the enforcement gap; the variables' relationships tested); The cross-sectional design — the one-time measurement (the single survey wave; the docket's snapshot); The longitudinal design — the same units over time (the docket's decade; the delay's trend; the panel's re-visits); The case-study design — the one unit's depth (one court, one institution, one dispute — the triangulation of interviews, records, observation); The comparative design — the two-or-more settings contrasted (the two districts; the two statutes' eras); The before-and-after (impact) design — the reform's effect measured (the pre-2074 vs. post-2074 practice: the Civil Code's changes in action); The experimental and quasi-experimental designs — the randomised or matched comparison (rare in legal research; the clinic's randomised-advice study as the frontier; the "quasi" where randomisation is impossible but comparison groups are constructed); The doctrinal design — the library blueprint (the sources' plan, the analysis steps, the synthesis strategy — the doctrinal study needs a design too). The design's components (any design's anatomy): the questions/hypotheses; the…