Building a Foundation Your Study Can Stand On
The contribution you expect when designing a study may not be the contribution the completed research actually makes. Findings, methodological developments, and unexpected results can legitimately change the contribution, provided the final claim follows the evidence.
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Building a Foundation Your Study Can Stand On
A strong contribution claim does not need inflated language. Learn how to make the most defensible claim your evidence supports without exaggerating novelty, generalizability, theoretical importance, or practical implications.
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Building a Foundation Your Study Can Stand On
A strong study is not just a collection of individually reasonable choices. Learn how to align your research question, framework, variables, sampling, data collection, and analysis so they work together to answer the same problem.
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Building a Foundation Your Study Can Stand On
Research alignment means that the major parts of a study fit together logically. Learn what researchers are actually checking when they ask whether a study is aligned.
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Building a Foundation Your Study Can Stand On
A research problem and research question can each sound convincing while still pointing in different directions. Learn how to test whether the question actually investigates the problem your study claims to address.
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Building a Foundation Your Study Can Stand On
A conceptual framework can be broader than the empirical study it informs, but that does not make every omission harmless. Learn when examining only part of a framework is defensible and when the framework promises more than the study investigates.
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Building a Foundation Your Study Can Stand On
Having data is not the same as having the evidence needed to answer your research question. Learn how to work backward from the answer you seek to determine what evidence your study must produce.
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Building a Foundation Your Study Can Stand On
A method can be executed correctly and still be incapable of answering your research question. Learn how to recognize a question-method mismatch and decide whether the question, evidence, or design needs to change.
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Building a Foundation Your Study Can Stand On
Correct sampling, measurement, data collection, and analysis do not guarantee a coherent study. A method can be executed properly while answering a different question from the one the research claims to investigate.
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Building a Foundation Your Study Can Stand On
A research alignment matrix maps the connections among important parts of a study so you can inspect whether each research question has the evidence, methods, and analysis needed to answer it. It is useful as a diagnostic tool, but it is not mandatory for every study.
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Building a Foundation Your Study Can Stand On
A useful alignment matrix does more than place research components in adjacent cells. Learn how to build one by testing the reasoning between the cells and using mismatches as signals to revise the study.
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Building a Foundation Your Study Can Stand On
Not every research problem can be repaired by changing an instrument, sample, or statistical test. Learn when recurring methodological difficulties suggest that the question, framework, assumptions, or scope of the study needs reconsideration.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches answer different kinds of research questions and produce different forms of evidence. The appropriate choice depends on what you need to know, not on which approach appears more rigorous.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Exploratory, descriptive, explanatory, and evaluative usually describe what a study is trying to accomplish rather than the specific procedures it uses. Distinguishing these purposes helps align the research question, evidence, design, and conclusions.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
A study can legitimately be both descriptive and explanatory when its questions require both an account of what is happening and an investigation of how or why it happens. The key is ensuring that each type of claim is supported by appropriate evidence.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Research often requires methodological compromises, but some changes affect more than study quality. Learn how to recognize when a practical adjustment changes what your evidence can establish, and when the research question itself must be revised.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
A research question does more than identify what you want to know. It also implies what evidence must exist before you can answer it. Learn how to identify that evidence before choosing your data source or collection method.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Collecting relevant data does not necessarily mean you can answer your research question. Learn how to identify the evidence needed to support a defensible conclusion and choose methods capable of producing it.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Research questions require different forms of evidence depending on what they ask researchers to establish. Learn to distinguish description, comparison, association, prediction, explanation, and causation before choosing your research design.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Some research questions require measurements, others require access to people's experiences, and some genuinely need both. Learn how to distinguish these evidential requirements without confusing data types with research designs.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
A difference observed at two points does not always establish that individuals changed, and change does not automatically establish causation. Learn what temporal evidence your research question requires and how to collect it credibly.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Some research questions ask whether an outcome occurs, while others ask how it comes about. Learn when mechanism evidence is necessary, what forms it can take, and how to avoid mistaking an association for an explanation.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
An intervention may be promising in principle but difficult to deliver in practice. Learn when implementation evidence is necessary, what it can establish, and how to investigate what actually happened during intervention delivery.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Observing improvement after an intervention does not necessarily mean the intervention caused it. Learn when effectiveness evidence is needed, what makes a comparison credible, and how to match causal claims to the strength of the research design.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
An intervention can achieve its intended outcome while creating additional burdens or unintended consequences. Learn when harms and benefits must be investigated together, how to select appropriate measures, and why favorable effectiveness findings may not settle whether an intervention is worthwhile.
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