Their hope is that it will assist students and novice researchers to develop better understandings of research design, thereby enabling them to produce significant and rigorous research. The text has already been embraced as a core resource in academic institutions across Europe and the United States.
The main idea throughout the book is that research design involves more than just choosing methods and gathering data. Rather, research design includes thinking about, and then making, a series of decisions that will affect every part of the thinking-based, iterative process of designing research, no matter what research approach is being used.
This includes what will be studied and why, how it will be studied and why, through to understanding what can and cannot be said because of the way the research was designed and why. The incorporation of the "and why" thought process is what lends credibility and thoroughness to the design.
Students writing a thesis or dissertation will benefit from this text's approach to the development of and design of research. It provides a strong theoretical understanding of the process of moving from an idea to a research proposal to the final research project. A good addition to the library of someone who is doing research.
Hugh Clark, Florida Gulf Coast University
According to Cheek and Øby, there has been a loss of critical thinking in the teaching and discussion of research design. They argue that research methods are often viewed as separate from other design-related considerations, leading to a narrow focus on data collection techniques.
This book is written to counter this and thereby shift the focus of research design discussions. Rather than focusing on research procedures and techniques, the book emphasizes the importance of putting thinking about designing research at the center of the discussion.
The authors describe the complexities of research and clearly describe the many details that go into a well-designed and executed study. They have done an amazing job describing the process of research design. Any student learning about research will benefit from this book.
Lauren Hays, University of Central Missouri
Cheek and Øby are clear that they wrote this book with the intention of challenging the notion that research design is a dull and uninteresting subject that students must endure as some sort of research rite of passage.
They are passionate about research, and developing researchers. Therefore, the book is written from their perspectives as 1. educators about research 2. active researchers and therefore practitioners of what they teach, and 3. their belief that research can be taught in ways that are relevant, exciting, and interesting.
They also say that, in their experience, a lot of training and talking about research design has become the same thing as talking about research methods. So, discussions of research design and how it is taught to students and new researchers tend to focus too much on the technical and procedural parts of collecting data, with the assumption that if these parts are followed, they will always lead to rigorous, credible, and significant research.
Both authors possess academic qualifications in both science and social science fields, and between them they have Masters and PhDs in social science, organizational and leadership studies, and Mathematics.
They have also both taught courses in science and social science. Because of this broad scholarly foundation, the authors are able to move the attention away from the differences between qualitative and quantitative approaches to research and instead shift the focus throughout the book to the similarities between the two as well as how those similarities and differences affect the way that knowledge is built through research.
This is one of the clearest and most accessible research methods books I have read as a scholar. I highly recommend for both students and teachers alike. It is an excellent survey of both qualitative and quantitative research methods.
Natalie Danielle Baker, Sam Houston State University
The book was inspired by, and developed from, the research design and methods courses that Cheek and Øby developed and teach in the Masters of Organization and Leadership program at Østfold University College.
The four years part time Master’s degree is highly respected and ranked in its field.
Throughout the third and fourth years of the master’s program, research design and methods are taught progressively and iteratively. This gives students the opportunity to revisit and rethink their research design related decisions as their master’s projects progress, from deciding on a topic of interest to coming up with research questions to collecting data and analyzing it to figuring out what they found and how it fits with the theory they explored in Years 1 and 2, and their working life experiences.
Unanimous feedback from both supervisors and examiners has been that students’ awareness about the centrality of research design in ensuring the quality of their master’s thesis has increased as the teaching that this book is based on has developed. What’s happened, that our external examiners have remarked on, is that students’ master theses have gone from being essays about themes in organization and leadership to being research about organization and leadership.
Jan Moren – Masters program coordinator for the Masters of Organization and Leadership program at Østfold University College
It is exciting that a course developed at HiØ was the basis of, and catalyst for, a book that will now be used in various disciplinary contexts and countries.
Cheek and Øby bring into focus and address questions that students in our Master program (as do students in most programs at Master and Bachelor level) struggle with when designing their research projects. I am proud that this book has arisen from our Master program in Organization and Leadership at Østfold University College.
Frode Hübertz Haaland Year 3 coordinator for the Masters of Organization and Leadership program at Østfold University College
Cheek and Øby are clear that the book would not be what it is without the lively discussions and feedback from all the students, fellow researchers, mentors, and educators from higher education and research institutions from within and without Norway that they have had the privilege to work with, and learn from, for many decades.
They acknowledge that such discussion and feedback has taught them much about what really matters when thinking about research design and it is from their questions about, and at times struggles with, designing research that the idea for this book emerged.
For more details about the book and the thinking behind it, tune into the podcast about the book on SAGE Methodspace.
Reference:
Cheek, Julianne & Øby, Elise (2023). Research Design: Why thinking about design matters. Sage Publications. ISBN 9781544350899. 316 s.
The reviews about the book in the article above are taken from Sage's website.