ABSTRACT
A primary goal of this chapter is to help you to plan for a quantitative research project. Whether you collect your own data, or use existing data, careful planning will produce a more effi cient project. You will be able to complete it more quickly and to interpret the results more easily than you could otherwise. At the planning stage you should think through questions such as: what variables are needed to operationalize my concepts? Can I predict the direction of association between each predictor variable and the outcome? Do I anticipate that any predictor variables’ associations with the outcome may change when confounding variables are included in the models? Do I anticipate that any predictor variables’ associations with the outcome will differ for various subgroups? Doing so can help you to choose from among existing data sets (selecting the one that has the right variables and sample coverage). Forward thinking should save you time in the long run, because you will be less likely to have to backtrack to create additional variables or to rerun earlier analyses. Forward thinking will also help you to avoid being unable to examine particular research questions because subsamples are too small or constructs were not measured.
