When to Use What Research Design

Designing Research: A Practical Guide for Choosing the Right Method

Clear, systematic, and user-friendly, this pioneering book is the first to concentrate on selecting the most defensible research design based on a specific research question. It provides practical guidance for evaluating the strengths and limitations of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches.

Readers can explore the book in sequence or jump to chapters addressing particular research stages—such as design selection, participant sampling, and ethical considerations—or methods of data collection including surveys, interviews, experiments, observations, archival research, and mixed approaches. Many chapter and section titles are framed as questions, making it easy to locate targeted guidance and make informed decisions that shape the quality of data analysis and interpretation.

Highlights Include:

• Intuitive organization with clearly structured parts and chapters

• Real-world examples drawn from multiple disciplines

• End-of-chapter summary tables for quick review of key concepts

• Curated reading lists for deeper exploration

• Integrated discussion of ethics, sampling, and data collection in a single resource

• A comprehensive glossary for quick reference

Pair this with Vogt et al.'s Selecting the Right Analyses for Your Data for the next steps in analyzing and interpreting research findings.