When putting your research plan together, answering the what, when and who questions will guide your thinking as you design your research study.
Let’s break these down further:
What and When?
While putting your research plan together it is important to consider:
- The activities included in the intervention
- The length of the intervention or time frame
Note:
A timeline will help the researcher stay focused on their plan. Even if adjustments need to be made to the plan as you proceed it is important to have a timeline.
If your research does not involve an intervention (i.e. exploratory research) where the focus is on understanding or describing, the research plan typically includes simply the data collection strategies that will be used to answer the broad general question and a timeline for collecting data.
Who?
Your research plan should outline:
- Your research participants
- How you’ll choose them
Essentially, who will be part of your study?
Consider whether your action research will target:
- all students
- students in a particular course
- a specific section of a course
Source: Envato Elements
When deciding on study participants, it’s essential to keep your research manageable. If you’re teaching multiple courses or sections of the same course, it might be wise to limit your focus to one course or one section of a course.
Ethical considerations, which we will address in Module 4, may come into play when dealing with course sections.
It’s important to keep in mind that in your project, you aren’t solely the researcher; you’re also a participant. While you might initially think of action research as a way to collect information from others, a significant aspect of it involves self-discovery (Hendricks, 2013).
When it comes to choosing your research participants, there are numerous methods available:
Methods for Choosing Research Participants
Remember:
Considering that most action research projects involve the researcher’s own students, it’s highly probable that purposive sampling, where participants are chosen for a particular reason will be the preferred approach.
Summary
Note:
Your research question drives your research design.
The following are some guidelines that will help map out your research design:
- Research focus
- Research participant characteristics
- Sample size
- Length & frequency of intervention
- Data: what will be collected, how will it be accessed, what is the timing?
(Duesbery & Twyman, 2020)
