Business Research -Designing the research

[1]Methodologies associated with positivism

-Experimental studies: An experimental study is a methodology used to investigate the relationship between variables, where the independent variables is deliberately manipulated to observe the effect on the dependent variable.

-Surveys: A survey is a methodology designed to collect primary or secondary data from a sample, with a view to generalizing the results to a population.

-Cross-sectional studies: A cross-sectional study is a methodology used to investigate variables or a group of subjects in different contexts over the same period of time.

-Longitudinal studies: A longitudinal study is a methodology used to investigate variables or a group of subjects over a long period of time.

-Benchmarking research: A process for rapidly learning the essence of a desired field of knowledge with an interest in finding its leading edge. 

[2]Methodologies associated with interpretivism

-Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics is a methodology that focuses on the interpretation and understanding of text in the context of the underlying historical and social forces

-Ethnography: Ethnography is a methodology in which the researcher uses socially acquired and shared knowledge to understand the observed patterns of human activity.

-Participative inquiry: Participative inquiry is a methodology that involves the participants as fully as possible in the study, which is conducted in their own group or organization.

-Action research: Action research is a methodology used in applied research to find an effective way of bringing about a conscious change in a partly controlled environment.

-Case studies: A case study is methodology that is used to explore a single phenomenon(the case) in a natural setting using a variety of methods to obtain in-depth knowledge.

-Grounded theory: Grounded theory is a frame work in which there is joint collection, coding and analysis of data using a systematic set of procedures to develop an inductively derived theory.

-Feminist, gender and ethnicity studies: Feminist studies are a methodology used to investigate and seek understanding of phenomena from a feminist perspective.

[3]Triangulation and mixed methods: 

-Triangulation is the use of multiple sources of data, different research methods and/or more than one researcher to investigate the same phenomenon in a study.