First look at general phases of the research (the steps in which is the research conducted):

This phase would not be mentioned by classical research approach as the research is standardly designed within specific scientific field with specific topics, methods and approaches (see the chapter How to explore an issue (the steps) above). In this sense researchers often start in the phase of the research design – formulating criteria/hypothesis (see below).

It is actually quite interesting that (many) research that is done (see the scientific papers to confront it yourself) actually does not have formulated research questions – in the meaning what phenomena do we want to understand) And if “research questions” are formulated these are actually concrete criteria and hypothesis not a question concerning the issue but particular already selected aspect (selected criteria to be tested by the research). So in this sense if we want to understand something it is up to us to put together outcomes of different research to answer a question concerning the topic.

In our case, the ACTIVE approach, we would like to encourage to start with problematizing the problem definition itself. This is also important as we are dealing with students from secondary level of education with no specific scientific field behind them. So they should also start with actually orient themselves in the concerned topic. As we would rather call as selected issue (which can have more topics in it).

In this phase we actually orient in the issue itself to see what is it about and what is and what is not important. In the terminology of the Design thinking it is the Divergent phase (see above). The goal is to collect information to see/understand what choices we actually have and what are the possible and relevant approaches, perspectives, opinions, actors concerning the issue.  So it is like making the overall picture to understand the issue.

We can ask questions as:

What is important?

What are the relevant actors?

What are the opposing narratives, perspectives and opinions?

What topics should be covered (explained) to get relevant picture about the issue?

What problems to solve? How are these problems perceived by different actors?

Note that most of these questions actually had been part of Activity 2. So it is expected to build on this findings when designing the research. The activities done as part of the Activity 1 and 2 are actually desk research part of the research (of course they might need to be extended further).

As the research itself will be (by its essence) focused (we will look for something – look for prove, evidence, patterns…). We need to at first know what we want/need to find out to understand the issue (topics concerned, actors, differing perspectives and opinions…).

Problem is understood in broad sense as something that should be/need to be solved for some purpose (avoid harm, find solution, understand causes or impact of something etc.). Need to do something or need to know/understand something. In narrow perspective the problem is understood as something that is perceived as not wanted (something that should be avoided).

The “problem” represents the main aim of the research. As: we might want to find what are the solutions for something…(e.g. climate change); what are causes of something…; what are impacts of something…

The aim of the research should be feasible for the students and in scope that can be grasped. See in the example below with broad research question like: What are causes of climate change? Such a question is actually very broad and not every aspects could be covered. But it still would make sense to research and put together all the known causes of climate change without going too deep about the individual causes. Or on the other hand we could choose selected topic(s) and research deeper bout them. We would recommend to give a choice to students to choose what are they interested – to go more deep about one specific topic or to grasp wide topic from different perspectives) The class could also be (as the best solution) divided and some students could work on overall picture and some on details.

The “problem” we want to explore need to be conceptualized in the form of research questions. The purpose of research questions is actually (or should be) to grasp/tackle relevant aspects of the problem we want to solve.

Research questions might in general be asked about:

• Measure of things (how much, how many)

o   leads to quantitative research design looking for measurement (relative - percentage of something or absolute - quantity of something)

o   difference – is there a statistically and substantially relevant difference between two sets of cases (e. g. do men in given population have higher salaries than women?)

o   for testing hypothesis (set criteria) (as part of deductive approach) or for finding patterns (important aspects) (as part of inductive approach)

o   outcomes are numbers and statistics

-          describes characteristics, averages, patterns

-          relationship between characteristics/aspects (like correlation)

• Explanation of things (why…someone does what he does)

o   leads to qualitative research design looking for in-depth understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, experiences and motivations

o   outcome are words/statements and explanations

-          understand subjective or group experiences, motivations, needs, objective

o   possible to explain findings from quantitative research (part of deductive approach) or for formulating new hypothesis  (part of inductive approach)

So as for example if we want to find solutions for impacts of climate change (the problem/aim) we should ask questions like as:

What are the causes for climate changes?

What are the impacts of climate change? (here could be many subquestions concerning different aspects of society and nature)

What are the possible actions to tackle causes and impacts of climate change (mitigation measures)?

What impact this solutions will have on the climate/different actors in society/nature…?

What are the possible actions to tackle impacts of climate change (adaptation measures)?

To what extend these solutions will help to tackle climate change (effectiveness of these actions)?

To what extend these solutions are efficient to tackle climate change?

…and surely many more…

From this example we can see that to “solve a problem” we usually need to answer more questions to really grasp the problem from the relevant perspectives. The above questions are still very broad and it would be better to focus the research questions into more detailed subquestions. And  possibly (according to our aim) to narrow the research to one of the above topic or to tackle the problem from the broad/overall perspective without going in to details.

The key question for formulating the research questions would be: What are the relevant aspects of the problem we need to know to solve the problem?

Someone might consider the aims of the research as part of the research design, to some extend it is also possible, but we would rather (but not strictly) understand research design as strategy to reach the aims of the research = strategy to find answers to research questions. In this context, strategy means a plan to use various resources over given time.

Hypothesis assumption to be tested during the research. It could be formulated based on some theory or previous findings. Hypothesis should have relevance to the research question(s). Notice that many seemingly “exploratory” questions could be also formulated as hypothesis. Like if you ask whether an action taken is effective you can understand it actually as testing a hypothesis about effectiveness of the action (hypothesis = the action is effective).

Research design should define following aspect of the research:

• Define criteria by which we will judge reaching the aims of research questions

o   The aim of the criteria is to define concrete aspects and hypothesis that we need to find out or to be assessed so we can answer the research question

o   The criteria could be in a form of concrete hypothesis to be tested OR in could be exploratory (identifying relevant aspects of something)

• Choosing the methods to be used to fulfil/answer the defined criteria

o   First choose whether you will do (need to do/can do) field research to get primary data or will just use secondary data based on desk research

-          What data and information we can get by other sources (desk research)?

-          For what we will have to do a field research?

-          Consider time and resources available

o   Choose quantitative or qualitative approach (or combination)

o   See the methods described above to decide which and how to use it

• Identify sources of information and data for the desk research

• Choosing the target groups for the field research methods

o   Who are going to be the respondents of the survey, interviews or participants of group interview…?

o   It is good to go into details of exactly :

-          who is going to be target group (e.g. company might be a target group but not a respondent, you have to define who will be approached as a representative of the company: CEO, manager, employee, HR… / the same with schools, and also thing who is actually the target group school or rather students, director, teachers, cooks are)

-          how many respondents we will have

-          how they will be approached (where we get contacts and means of

o   Crucial is to define relevant structure of the groups (see above about quantitative research) without relevant representation the research will be not conclusive

• Setting up the time schedule for the research

o   Set a time plan for the desk and the field research

-          Research should be planed for every step so we know what will be followed by what

-          Recommended is to use Gantt chart (it can be quite easy in XLS, see Activity 3 materials)

o   go into details e.g. when will the survey start and how long will have the respondents time for the answers

In this phase the main activities include:

• Collecting the documents, data sets etc. for the desk research

• Preparation for the field research:

o   designing the questionnaires for surveys and interviews

-          remember the research criteria

-          concrete structure (topics of the questionnaire:
what we need to know x not what all can we know)

-          formulating the questions

-          setting the scales (for surveys)

o   program the survey questionnaire if planned to be done on-line

o   getting the contact information to be able to reach the respondents

o   So called piloting – using your research method on a small sample, reflecting on it and making changes if necessary (e.g. you find out that some questions are misunderstood)

o   preparing for the realization of the survey and interview

Realization of the desk research and field research.

See details how to conduct individual method above.

In this phase all the data and information gathered thought research are analyzed and/or synthesis approach is done. The main goal is to assess the research criteria and answer the research questions.

In quantitative research statistical analysis is performed and interpreted. For qualitative research the gathered information is analyzed and findings are formulated. Once again, plan ahead – different stastistical software has various needs for data standards and option of data analysis. You should shape our data according to it.

For details see Module 4 Making sense of information

Check list to control when preparing and conducting research:

• The research questions are relevant to our aim of the research (answering them will lead to finding what we need to know)

o   relevant aspects of the issue were considered

o   consider main aspects that might influence our decisions based on the research

• The research criteria will enable us to answer the research questions

• The methods chosen will enable us to assess the research criteria

• Time and resources available were considered

• Relevant groups are approached by the research (without relevant representation the research will be not conclusive and reliable for decision making and we should be careful about the interpretation of the findings)

• The target groups for the field research are reachable to us (we know how to reach them)

• Questions for the interviews and surveys are needed and connected to the research criteria

• Legal standards of research such as informed consent and GDPR rules if needed

Example research design to solve research question: What are the impacts of climate change?

PS: the following is just an examples and as such not complete. We can by this example also see that if the research question is to brad than there are (to many) ways how to approach it. It will better to formulate more subquestions to cover this topic or narrow the topic itself. But on the other hand there would be nothing wrong to pose broad but relevant question where the aim would not be to go deep in to it but to identify only the “main aspects”.