There are different types of research design depend on the nature of the problem and objectives of the study. Following are the four types of research design.
- Explanatory Research Design
- Descriptive Research Design
- Diagnostic Research Design
- Experimental Research Design
Explanatory Research Design
In explanatory research design a researcher uses his own imaginations and ideas. It is based on the researcher personal judgment and obtaining information about something. He is looking for the unexplored situation and brings it to the eyes of the people. In this type of research there is no need of hypothesis formulation.
Descriptive Research Design
In descriptive research design a researcher is interested in describing a particular situation or phenomena under his study. It is a theoretical type of researcher design based on the collection designing and presentation of the collected data. Descriptive research design covers the characteristics of people, materials, Scio-economics characteristics such as their age, education, marital status and income etc. The qualitative nature data is mostly collected like knowledge, attitude, beliefs and opinion of the people. Examples of such designs are the newspaper articles, films, dramas, and documentary etc.
Diagnostic Research Design
Here researcher wants to know about the root causes of the problem. He describes the factors responsible for the problematic situation. It is a problem solving research design that consists mainly:
- Emergence of the problem
- Diagnosis of the problem
- Solution for the problem and
- Suggestion for the problem solution
Experimental Research Design
In this type of research design is often uses in natural science but it is different in social sciences. Human behavior cannot be measured through test-tubes and microscopes. The social researcher use a method of experiment in that type of research design. One group is subjected to experiment called independent variables while other is considered as control group called dependent variable. The result obtained by the comparison of both the two groups. Both have the cause and effect relationship between each other.