Most colleges require students to carry out original, primary research during their thesis or dissertation process. This means, at some stage, you will need to design a study and gather data using appropriate methodology and methods. Students often ask us which research approach should they use – deductive, inductive or mixed methods? The short answer is, whichever is right for you, or more accurately, whichever is suitable for your research problem.
A useful place to start is to decide whether to adopt a deductive or an inductive approach to your primary research.
The deductive approach involves developing (or adopting) a theory and hypothesis, and then designing a research strategy to test it. This is suitable if you are testing a theory that you, or someone else, has already developed. It is a structured approach grounded in scientific principles. Typically, you collect and collate valid and reliable data, and analyse and interpret it, in sequence, and in an organised way. You attempt to establish ‘facts’ that explain causal relationships between variables, and thus prove (or disprove) the theory.
By contrast, the inductive approach involves collecting data and developing a theory from them as you ‘make sense’ of your data. This is suitable if, rather than testing a specific theory, you aim to build a new theory based on the data you have collected. Typically, when adopting an inductive approach, data collection and collation, and analysis and interpretation overlap and are carried out in a more flexible way. You use the data to provide insights into meanings people attach to events and experiences to create a theory that explains them.
Georgina Vernon, an MSc in Tourism and Hospitality Management student, says “It is best to locate your research in one of the two principal approaches – deductive or inductive. Precisely which you choose is influenced by your overall research problem. It is ultimately dependent on the type and amount of data you need to collect to reach your aims”.
Not all research falls neatly into either the deductive or inductive approach. If one approach is not sufficient on its own to capture the full details of a situation, deduction (theory testing) and induction (theory building), are combined within the same study. In such cases, a mixed methods approach, abduction (uncovering and relying on the most fitting explanations for understanding the results), is adopted. Including abduction ensures the research questions are fully answered, or the hypothesis supported.
“Combining the two methods, and adding abductive thinking, made my study much more challenging”, cautions Fiona Furness, a BSc in Data Science student. “When I designed my study, collected and collated my data, and carried out my analysis and interpretation, each step became multi-faceted and multi-layered. There was a significant risk that my research design would end up being complicated and complex, with the data too difficult to gather. With the help of Thesis Upgrade’s excellent book, Collecting Your Data, everything worked out perfectly!”
Solid arguments. Keep up the good effort.