ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a conceptual framework for classifying various types of research designs to help reduce the confusion. It describes in more detail the various research designs used for finding answers to the two basic research questions: what and why. The chapter discusses the factors that can interfere with the results of a study under the heading of internal validity. The basic–applied continuum represents research that ranges from the highly theoretical to the very practical. An ethnographic study is characterized by the researchers getting as close as possible to the culture under study over an extended period of time. Discourse analysis (DA) and conversational analysis (CA) are related in that they analyze connected discourse. DA is more an umbrella label that subsumes a number of ways to study connected discourse, whether written, spoken, or sign language, whereas CA is a specific fine-grain analysis of limited spoken discourse.
