Step 1: What Is Research?
- Research is a systematic way of answering a question with evidence, carried out so that someone else can check how you reached your answer.
- Research can describe (what is happening?), explain (why?), evaluate (did it work?) or explore (what is going on here at all?).
- Quantitative research works with numbers and large samples; qualitative research works with words, meanings and smaller samples; mixed methods combines them.
- Deductive research tests an existing theory; inductive research builds ideas up from the data.
- Every project, from a 4,000-word Extended Essay to a PhD, moves through the same cycle: question, literature, design, data, analysis, write-up.
Research is more than looking things up
In everyday speech, “doing research” can mean reading a few web pages before buying a phone. In a university, research means something stricter. You start with a question nobody has fully answered for your setting, you collect or find evidence in a planned way, you analyse it with methods others recognise, and you report what you did in enough detail that a reader could repeat it or challenge it.
Throughout this guide we follow one running project: a student wants to know how part-time jobs affect university students’ studies. You will see the same project move from a vague interest to a research question, a design, a questionnaire, interviews, analysis and a finished dissertation.
Chapter 1 of Research Methods Made Simple covers this in full, with templates for every stage of your project.Get the textbook · $15
Four purposes of research
Before choosing any method, decide what kind of answer you want. The purpose shapes everything that follows.
| Purpose | The question it answers | Part-time jobs example |
|---|---|---|
| Descriptive | What is happening, and how much? | What share of students work, and for how many hours a week? |
| Explanatory | Why does it happen? What causes what? | Do longer working hours lower students’ marks? |
| Evaluative | Did a programme or policy work? | Did the university’s time-management workshop help working students? |
| Exploratory | What is going on? What matters to people? | How do working students describe juggling shifts and deadlines? |
Quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods
The two big families of methods answer different kinds of question. Neither is “better”; each is better at something.
| Quantitative | Qualitative | |
|---|---|---|
| Data | Numbers: counts, scores, ratings | Words, images, observations |
| Typical sample | Large, chosen to represent a population | Small, chosen for rich information |
| Typical methods | Surveys, experiments, secondary datasets | Interviews, focus groups, observation, documents |
| Analysis | Statistics: averages, tests, regression | Coding and themes |
| Strength | How much, how many, how strong | How and why, in people’s own terms |
Mixed methods uses both in one study. A common design is a survey of 300 students to measure working hours and marks, followed by 10 interviews to understand why some working students cope well and others do not (Step 14).
Deductive and inductive reasoning
Deductive research starts with a theory, turns it into a hypothesis and tests it with data. Time-allocation theory says hours spent working are hours not spent studying, so you might hypothesise that students who work more than 15 hours a week score lower marks, then test that with survey data.
Inductive research starts with the data and builds ideas upward. You interview working students with no fixed hypothesis and notice that many describe their job as giving structure to the week. That pattern becomes a new idea to explore.
The research cycle
Almost every project follows the same stages. The rest of this guide takes them one at a time.
| Stage | What you do | Guide step |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Question | Turn a topic into a focused, answerable question | Step 2 |
| 2. Literature | Find out what is already known and where the gap is | Step 3 |
| 3. Ethics | Plan how to protect participants and data | Step 4 |
| 4. Design | Choose the design, sample and measures | Steps 5–8 |
| 5. Data | Collect it, or find secondary data | Steps 8, 9 and 14 |
| 6. Analysis | Code the words, or run the statistics | Steps 10–13 |
| 7. Write-up | Report, reference and defend | Steps 15–16 |
The cycle is not a straight line. A literature search can change your question; a pilot survey can change your design. Good researchers expect to loop back.
Classify each project by purpose and by approach. (a) Counting how many students in a city use food banks. (b) Testing whether a free breakfast scheme raised attendance. (c) Interviewing 12 international students about their first term.
What makes research good?
Examiners and supervisors judge research against a few shared standards. You will meet each in detail later, but it helps to know them from the start.
- Validity: are you measuring what you claim, and do your conclusions follow? (Step 7)
- Reliability: would you get the same result if you repeated the measurement?
- Generalisability: does the finding apply beyond your sample? (Step 6)
- Trustworthiness, for qualitative work: credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability (Step 10).
- Ethics and integrity: participants protected, data honest, sources credited (Step 4).
Practise until it sticks: Research Methods Made Simple Practice Questions has 1,004 questions, each with a worked answer.Get the practice book · $9
Practise: 6 questions
Try each one on paper first, then check the worked answer.
EasyQ1. Give the purpose (descriptive, explanatory, evaluative or exploratory) of: (a) “What percentage of graduates are in work six months later?” (b) “Why do some students drop out in the first year?” Show worked answer
(b) Explanatory if you test specific causes with data; exploratory if you interview students to discover the reasons in their own words. Either is defensible if justified.
EasyQ2. State two differences between quantitative and qualitative research. Show worked answer
MediumQ3. Is this deductive or inductive? A researcher reads that student loans increase stress, hypothesises that students with larger loans report higher stress scores, and tests it on 400 survey responses. Show worked answer
MediumQ4. A student plans to survey 50 friends on Instagram about their part-time jobs and conclude what “UK students” think. Name the standard of good research this most threatens, and why. Show worked answer
MediumQ5. Suggest a mixed-methods design for “How do part-time jobs affect students’ studies?” and say what each part adds. Show worked answer
ExamQ6. “Research is just finding information.” Evaluate this statement. [6] Show worked answer
Check yourself
1. Which question is evaluative?
2. Inductive research
3. The word that best separates research from casual information-gathering is
Your score: 0 out of 3
The textbook and the practice book together: the Research Methods Made Simple bundle for $19 (was $24).Both books · $19
The short version
- Research is the systematic, transparent use of evidence to answer a clear question.
- Purposes: describe, explain, evaluate, explore. The purpose decides the method.
- Quantitative = numbers and breadth; qualitative = words and depth; mixed methods = both.
- Deductive tests theory; inductive builds it.
- The cycle: question, literature, ethics, design, data, analysis, write-up, with loops back.
Studying more than one subject? The Complete Book Bundle includes every Economics, Statistics, Mathematics, Econometrics and Research Methods book.