4.3 Importance of Research Design

(i) The question-evidence fit — the design guarantees the data collected can answer the question asked (the undesignes study's classic fate: rich data, wrong question); (ii) the economy — time and resources planned, not squandered on the unanalysable; (iii) the control of rival explanations — validity's machinery; (iv) the replicability — the design's transparency lets others re-run and check (reliability's licence); (v) the ethics' pre-commitment — the consent and protections planned before the field, not improvised inside it; (vi) the proposal's core — no approvable proposal without a credible design; (vii) the report's spine — the methodology chapter is the design's confession (U7). The closing line: research is designed, not merely done — the difference between the study and the wander. Exam Focus Long questions: (i) Research design's meaning/nature + its components; (ii) The types' catalogue with a legal example each (the exam's standard ask — aim for six-plus types); (iii) The importance list + the validity/reliability tests. Short questions: cross-sectional vs. longitudinal; internal vs. external validity; the before-and-after design; the case-study design's triangulation. Trick areas: (i) Internal validity = the CAUSAL confidence; external = the GENERALISATION — do not swap them; (ii) The descriptive design makes no causal claim — the student who confuses description with explanation loses the design question; (iii) Doctrinal research HAS a design — the…