What Are the Different Types of Research Methods Used in Dissertation?

Introduction

Are you writing a research paper? Or are you beginning to write a dissertation? You need to know about the accolades of writing a dissertation.

One of them is different types of research methods. It will help you gain knowledge and interpret and write to delve better into the research topic. Therefore, it is important to know about different types of research, which will help you collect data properly and act on it.

Consequently, it is important to understand different research methodologies, which can help you write high-quality research papers. So, let’s learn more in the next section.

Different Types of Research Methods

After determining the hypothesis, you need to know different research methods. This will help you write an analysis much better. You will also be able to give direction to your dissertation paper and improve its quality.

Here are a few different types of research methods, as per the best –

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is one of the primitive forms of scientific research. Following science, every other discipline followed the methods where numbers and facts acted to prove the hypothesis. The researchers collected primary data to give justice to your research topics and the objectives you have set.

However, to use the research method properly, you need to collect a large amount of data, which will help you to get accurate data. Therefore, with the right process, you can earn major benefits from the research method. So, if you are doing random sampling, you can use quantitative research to get the best outcome for your hypothesis.

Qualitative Research

As the humanities got more and more modern, the need for quantitative research increased. It was invented to get more human response from the respondents. The research method is much more humane and subjective in nature to put a better understanding upfront.

It mainly came into action after the birth of social psychology, which sought to understand human actions and usage.

For this, you can do observations, focus group discussions, interviews, and historical research. This will help you understand more about human interactions and their relation to social surroundings. Therefore, qualitative studies came into play to get a better understanding of humans.

Mixed Methods

Another addition to the list is mixed methods. It is a modern approach taken up by social science departments that seek to use quantitative and qualitative data to prove the relevancy of their data and hypothesis. That’s why most professors today ask researchers to use mixed methods to give a better understanding of the topic.

The modern approach has been fruitful, as numbers paint the picture for the holistic understanding to follow and coincide with it. That way, you get better results and properly analyze the subject. Also, it will increase the chance of error in your paper and follow the principles of falsification.

Fundamental Research

After moving away from the social science approach, let’s take the scientific approach, which aims to decipher what’s happening and formulate a theory. This approach is applicable to subjects like Math and psychology, where you can solve equations or behavioral patterns to present a theoretical understanding.

Moreover, fundamental research mostly applies to psychology, as it helps companies or institutions with their staff behavior. They study the behavorial pattern to come up with useful insights. That way, you will see in some cases, economics disciplines use the approach to offer an understanding of the correlation between two principles.

Conceptual Research

Another research method is conceptual research. In this research, philosophers mostly take abstract ideas and build theories around them. Here, there is no need for practical research, as it surrounds the present situations or visits past concepts and puts forth their discussion on it.

The methodology works by observing and understanding the situation in your own terms and interpreting them factually. The philosophers used the concept to understand the environment, nature, and everyday situations and forward a commentary of theories and inferences. Moreover, it enables thinkers to have multiple theories and inferences regarding one situation and revisit them or analyze the present ones to create new theories.

Empirical Research

Often, two variables affect each other to create a sense of mutual understanding. For example, if the inflation rate rises, your purchasing power decreases due to the high cost of prices and mortgage rates. Consequently, when you try to study the events it leads to experiments and observations, which is in other empirical research.

You will mostly see the usage of empirical research in fundamental sciences like chemistry and Physics. Those disciplines show how variables affect each other and lead to the creation of a world of their own. For this, you need to generate a hypothesis and work your research around to prove it null or alternative.

Descriptive Research

We all have read Max Weber, who suggests that social scientists should discuss facts and situations as they are without revealing their understanding. Similarly, this principle applies to descriptive research, where you have to discuss the variables as they are without actually controlling them.

This is a type of research in which you discuss the facts of the situation rather than putting your analysis in it. Therefore, it is also known as Ex post facto research. Research methods are mostly used when researchers have to describe characteristics, frequencies, and trends.

The Bottom Line

In the end, now that you know different types of research methods, you can choose any of them and apply them in your research. However, you can ask us, Ivory Research, to do the job for you and write you a great dissertation paper.

FAQs

Here are a few frequently asked questions –

What are the research methods?

Research methods are the process through which research is conducted to understand its relevancy and understanding in the modern world.

What is a research method example?

Surveys, observations, interviews, focus group discussions, and so on are a few examples of research methods.

What is the concept of research?

The creation of new knowledge or creating a new concept around the existing one is a concept of research.