CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH DESIGN
3.2 Research Design
The plan of choosing the areas, topics, study sites, and the data collection process that will answer the specific study questions is the research design (Le Roux, 2011). In a simple way, a procedural plan, accepted by the researcher to answer his or her questions in a legal way, is the research design. It should be unbiased and precise.
In order to obtain the expected results, a research design will fix the form of analysis that the researcher should carry out. Whether the design is perfect or not will depend on whether the researcher will be able to obtain the answers to his or her research questions. Thus, if the design is poor the results of the study will also be poor and not favorable. Therefore, the importance of the research design is placing all of the mechanisms of a project together.
The current study has followed both the quantitative and qualitative styles, which is a mixed-methods research design of collecting and analyzed data. Mixed- methods can be explained as a “type of research design in which qualitative and quantitative approaches are used in types of questions, research methods, data collection analysis procedures, and/or inferences” (Tashakkori, & Teddlie, 2003).
When the researcher uses the qualitative or quantitative method separately, both are valuable but they are found more powerful when the researcher uses them together (Cresswell, 2009). Throughout the 20th century, in the social and behavioral sciences, researchers repeatedly employed mixed-method, and this has continued into the 21st century (Brewer, J., & Hunter, 1989), (Greene, Caracelli, & Graham, 1989), (Maxwell
& Loomis, 2003), (Tashakkori, & Teddlie, 2003), (Cresswell, 2009). Thus, in order to generate a complete sense of interpreting and explaining data, mixed-methods research is the best.
This present study has followed the quantitative as well as qualitative methods, and the qualitative part will be used as a supplement to fulfill the information gap in order to enrich the discussion and to offer some recommendations that can contribute to policy formulations for the government of Bangladesh.
3.2.1 Research Paradigm
According to Teddlie and Tashakkori, “paradigmatic foundations” has been identified as the foremost contemporary issue for mixed-methods research (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2010). The philosophy adopted by the researcher is that “a researcher think about the development of knowledge” (Saunders, Lewis, &
Thornhill, 2009). Ontology, epistemology and methodology are the three categories of research philosophies known as fundamental beliefs (Guba, & Lincoln, 1994). The philosophical perspective of a researcher is a set of abstract principles combined with the ontological “what is the nature of reality?”, the epistemological “what is the relationship between the inquirer and the known? and methodological “how to go about acquiring knowledge?” beliefs of the individual (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). The researcher’s actions are guided by these beliefs, which represent a specific paradigm (Bryman, 2008). A researcher can elucidate and predict the phenomena with the help of the research paradigm that directs the study (Schunk, 2000). The paradigm guides the researcher not only in terms of the methods but also in terms of ontology and epistemology (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). Ontology denotes the beginning step of the research where objectivism and constructivism are the two contrasting perspectives (Bryman, 2008). Beyond the effects of the social actors, the objectivist perception considers reality as an external fact. On the other hand, constructivism shows reality as a social unit that is constructed from a state of constant revision but not only from the actions and perceptions of social actors (Bryman, 2008). The ontological perspective, holding with objectivists, is the same as the positivist paradigm. The positivist paradigm’s main feature is the acknowledgement of the quantitative method.
The three most relevant paradigms for this research are post positivism, pragmatism, and critical realism. The first one was developed based on the criticism of positivism. Post positivism works with quantitative as well as qualitative approaches, meaning mixed-methods, and most of them who claim themselves as post positivists employ mixed-methods. The second one is that pragmatism is familiar with mixed-methods as well. Pragmatism, from the perspective of epistemology, has more strong ties with mixed-methods than post positivism. The last paradigm is critical realism where “it may resolve relativism and absolutism perspectives at the
ontological level whereas pragmatism reconciles at the epistemological level. Critical realism adopts and supports characteristics from both quantitative and qualitative approaches.”
In the mixed-methods research context as a paradigm, among the three pragmatic perspectives (post positivist, pragmatism, and critical realism), pragmatism argues for and mostly proposes methodological and philosophical foundations (Biesta, 2010; Cresswell, 2009; Tashakkori, A. & Teddlie, 2003). Morgan (2014) states that:
mixed-methods research pragmatism is particularly appropriate and also states that these methods can be applied in a variety of ways (Morgan, 2014)). For the conduct of mixed-methods research, pragmatism is an appropriate paradigm (Johnson & Gray, 2010).
Based on above discussion, pragmatism can be seen as the most relevant paradigm to direct the mixed-methods approach, which has been employed in this research. Moreover, most of the mixed-methods scholars have relied on pragmatism as a suitable paradigm to guide their research philosophy.
3.2.2 Research Approach
Selecting a research approach for a specific study is difficult (Creswell, 2003).
The deductive and inductive approaches are the two broad common methods of reasoning (Hair, Babin, Money, & Samuel, 2003). The nature of the inductive discovery of patterns (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004) and reasoning is to move from specification to generalizations and theories. It is sometimes known as the bottom-up approach, whereas the deductive testing of theories and hypotheses (Johnson &
Onwuegbuzie, 2004) reasoning works in the opposite way, moving from greater generalization to more specification. The concern of the deductive approach is to test and confirm hypotheses. Sometimes it is known as the top-down approach. The current study is based on a mixed-methods style. This type of research is defined as
“the class of research where the researcher mixes or combines quantitative and qualitative research techniques, methods, approaches, concepts or language into a single study” (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004). In the recent study of the quantitative, the deductive approach is followed and in the qualitative portion the inductive approach is followed. Combined methods have a holistic understanding of the
situation and add more validity through the triangulation of research findings (Denton, 2019). However, analyzing the research questions and the stage of the study (Denton, 2019), and to gain the strengths and to shrink the weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative research, a combined strategy is followed (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004).