Role Of Design In Research Research Articles

The role of effect size and significance test in research design and analysis

Effect size is a straightforward method for measuring the difference between two groups and plays a critical role in research design and significance testing. This paper addresses the concept of effect size, explaining what it is, how it is calculated, and how it can be interpreted. It also explores related topics, such as statistical significance, meta-analysis, and power analysis. Effect sizes can be understood in the context of confidence intervals, which provide similar information to statistical significance tests but focus more on the magnitude of the effect rather than the size of the sample.

Natural experiments in healthy cities research: how can urban planning and design knowledge reinforce the causal inference?

Healthy cities researchers often ask questions about cause and effect: the causes are built environment interventions via urban planning and design practices, such as park renovation, a new bus line or a housing redevelopment programme; effects are individual and public health outcomes. The growing interest in natural experiments for causal inference in healthy cities research comes mainly from the public health fields. Planning and design knowledge of how the interventions were produced should have a central role in research design but is rarely discussed. This is evident from our analysis of three well-documented natural experiment research projects. This also motivates us to build a conceptual model, with the legal assignment of treatment and control groups and random distribution of confounders (LARD principle) to demonstrate how urban planning and design knowledge can help discover strong natural experiments to reinforce the causal inference in healthy cities research.

Rethinking U.S. enterprise zones: The role of research design in program evaluation

This paper offers an up-to-date review of Enterprise Zone programs across states in the U.S. An Enterprise Zone program often focuses on target locations, populations, and/or industries. Enterprise Zone program designs and implementations vary between states. The expected outcomes are likely to differ from the desired outcome, which is to revitalize Enterprise Zone areas. This paper also provides a review of the existing Enterprise Zone empirical literature on program effectiveness assessments. There are conflicting recommendations, even for the same Enterprise Zone program. To assess whether research design contributes to this situation, the paper explores several research design factors, including outcome measure, time span, spatial unit, data choice, and control of endogeneity. Information on these research factors in the existing literature is collected and coded. Descriptive and correlation analyses suggest that outcome measure, spatial unit, post-program time span, and the choice of an endogeneity control method have significant impacts on program effectiveness assessments.

Princesses are bigger than elephants: Effect size as a category error in evidence‐based education

Much of the evidential basis for recent policy decisions is grounded in effect size: the standardised mean difference in outcome scores between a study's intervention and comparison groups. This is interpreted as measuring educational influence, importance or effectiveness of the intervention. This article shows this is a category error at two levels. At the individual study level, the intervention plays only a partial role in effect size, so treating effect size as a measure of the intervention is a mistake. At the meta‐analytic level, the assumptions needed for a valid comparison of the relative effectiveness of interventions on the basis of relative effect size are absurd. While effect size continues to have a role in research design, as a measure of the clarity of a study, policy makers should recognise the lack of a valid role for it in practical decision‐making.

Establishing a community-based participatory research partnership among people who use drugs in Ottawa: the PROUD cohort study.

BackgroundGrounded in a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework, the PROUD (Participatory Research in Ottawa: Understanding Drugs) Study aims to better understand HIV risk and prevalence among people who use drugs in Ottawa, Ontario. The purpose of this paper is to describe the establishment of the PROUD research partnership.MethodsPROUD relies on peers’ expertise stemming from their lived experience with drug use to guide all aspects of this CBPR project. A Community Advisory Committee (CAC), comprised of eight people with lived experience, three allies and three ex-officio members, has been meeting since May 2012 to oversee all aspects of the project. Eleven medical students from the University of Ottawa were recruited to work alongside the committee. Training was provided on CBPR; HIV and harm reduction; and administering HIV point-of-care (POC) tests so that the CAC can play a key role in research design, data collection, analysis, and knowledge translation activities.ResultsFrom March-December 2013, the study enrolled 858 participants who use drugs (defined as anyone who has injected or smoked drugs other than marijuana in the last 12 months) into a prospective cohort study. Participants completed a one-time questionnaire administered by a trained peer or medical student, who then administered an HIV POC test. Recruitment, interviews and testing occurred in both the fixed research site and various community settings across Ottawa. With consent, prospective follow-up will occur through linkages to health care records available through the Institute for Clinical and Evaluation Sciences.ConclusionThe PROUD Study meaningfully engaged the communities of people who use drugs in Ottawa through the formation of the CAC, the training of peers as community-based researchers, and integrated KTE throughout the research project. This project successfully supported skill development across the team and empowered people with drug use experience to take on leadership roles, ensuring that this research process will promote change at the local level. The CBPR methods developed in this study provide important insights for future research projects with people who use drugs in other settings.

Crafting a Place for Interaction Design Research in HCI

In recent years, a number of academic institutions around the world have worked to integrate design practice and thinking with engi neering and behavioral science in support of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) education and research. While the HCI commu nity generally has been enthusiastic about the benefits that design can bring to this developing interdisciplinary field, tension exists around the role of design in research, because no agreed upon model for a design contribution exists. Over the last three years, we have undertaken an inquiry to understand the nature of the relationship between interaction design and in HCI, and to discover and invent methods for interaction designer researchers to more substantially collaborate and contribute to HCI research. Through our inquiry, we learned that many HCI researchers' commonly held view of design is focusing on the surface structure of products. This echoes Ble vis et al's claim that most people in the world view design as adding decoration.1 This limited view of design makes it difficult for HCI researchers to articulate how they would like designers to participate in research. In addition, the interaction design community lacks a unified vision of what design researchers can contribute to HCI research, and to interaction design at large. The current lack of design participation in HCI represents a lost opportunity to benefit from the added perspective of design thinking in a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment. The HCI community has much to gain from the addition of design thinking; a design perspective that employs a holistic approach to addressing under-constrained problems, and that adds a needed counterpoint to the reductionist approach favored by the scientists and engineers. To address this situation, we have developed a new model of interaction design in HCI intended to allow designers to participate more evenly. While this is not the only way for designers to participate in HCI research, we wanted to create a method that allowed designers to make a design contribution without imitating the methods of other disciplines. Our model builds on Frayling's2 idea of research through design, stressing how interaction design

The Role of Design in Research: The Integrative Learning Design Framework

In this article, a general model is proposed for design research in education that grows out of the author’s research and work in related design fields. The model emphasizes the stage sensitivity of (a) research questions, (b) data and methods, and (c) the need for researchers to design artifacts, processes, and analyses at earlier stages in their research that can then be profitably used (perhaps by different researchers) in later stages.

Assessment of Clinical Testing Methodology.

Because inadequate clinical testing may expose the public to unwarranted toxic effects a review of current clinical testing methodology is made and recommendatiosn for improvements are given. Areas covered include evaluation of data analysis procedures evaluation of the role of research design and some specific problems in contraceptive method evaluation. Recommendations call for greater standardization and for the development of new methodology in clinical testing data analysis and research design. Immediate steps to achieve this end include technical assistance from supporting agencies inclusion of clinical research methodology in training programs discussion of methodology in scientific forums advice from Journal editors and reviewers on methodology. At the international level those responsible for programs at universities and other institutions should ensure adequate technical assistance in methodology when encouraging clinical studies.