Identifying Study Designs
Find an article in a social science journal that reports
the results of actual research. (Be sure it is
not an article that only reviews and summarizes
other research.) Answer the following questions
about the article and the research.
1. List the author(s), title of article, journal,
month and year of publication, and pages.
2. Did the researcher(s) begin with at least one
hypothesis? If so, write one hypothesis and
identify the independent and dependent
variables. If there was no hypothesis, but
there was a research question, write it down.
3. Identify the main purpose(s) of this study
as exploratory, descriptive, explanatory,
or applied.
4. Describe the population and the sample in
this study. Is the population a cohort?
5. If this study used only one or a few cases or
analyzed the cases as a whole rather than by
focusing on variables, then it might be a case
study. If you believe it is a case study, give
support for this conclusion and skip Questions
69. If its not a case study, skip this
question and answer the rest.
6. How many times were data collected in this
study?
7. If data were collected more than once, how
many samples were selected?
8. Did the researchers try to control or manipulate
the independent variable in some way?
9. Did the researchers use a case, crosssectional,
panel, trend, or cohort study
design? If so, which one? Give support for
your answer.
10. Was the design useful for the researchers
purposes and goals or would another design
have been better? Give support for your answer