Research Design, as Independent of Methods

2004), the UK Medical Research Council model for undertaking complex medical
interventions (MRC, 2000) and one OECD conception of what useful policy research
looks like (Cook & Gorard, 2008). The cycle is more properly a spiral which has no
clear beginning or end, in which activities (phases) overlap, can take place
simultaneously, and iterate. Nevertheless, the various phases should be recognisable
to anyone working in areas of applied social science, like public policy. Starting with
draft research questions, the research cycle might start with a synthesis of existing
evidence (phase 1 here). Ideally this synthesis would be an inclusive review of the
literature both published and unpublished (perhaps combining the different kinds of
evidence via a Bayesian approach - Gorard, Roberts, & Taylor, 2004), coupled with
a re-analysis of relevant existing datasets of all kinds (including data archives and
administrative datasets), and related policy/practice documents. It is not possible to
conduct a fair appraisal of the existing evidence on almost any real topic in applied
social science without naturally combining evidence involving text, numbers,
pictures, and a variety of other data forms. Anyone who excludes relevant data
because of its type (such as text or numeric) is a fake researcher, not really trying to
find anything out.

Figure 1 - An outline of the full cycle of social science research and development

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