Structuring Effective Research Projects: Design & Methodology

The Relationship Between Project Design and Research Methodology

The relationship between action or intervention projects, project design, and research methodology can be considered a relationship of inclusion or levels. A proposed intervention may include a research project, or conversely, a research project may be integrated into a broader intervention project. This involves investigating social reality and acting upon it. Methodological design is only one part of a research project, though it can become the most crucial. It is important to emphasize that a research project is a message. Its manifest form is a document, initially presented to an institution that may support the project's development. Therefore, its rhetorical and pragmatic dimensions must not be overlooked. Like any message, it can be analyzed from three perspectives:

1. Semantic Analysis: The project covers an area of social reality, highlighting the necessity and possibility of increasing knowledge about it.
2. Syntactic Analysis: The project consists of a series of interlocking parts, ensuring each component is consistent with the others.
3. Pragmatic Analysis: This relates to the research project as a message or document. A research project serves as:
   • A presentation of the research team.
   • A demand for attention on a fragment of social reality. The project identifies the need to allocate resources to a specific part of social reality, emphasizing its significance.
   • A demand for resources, which has become one of the dominant pragmatic functions of a project.
   • A commitment that takes on the characteristics of a promise. This includes internal commitment and undertaking collaborative work with the institution supporting or funding the research, within the proposed timeframe and using the allocated resources.
   • A control device, ensuring that current progress meets the various objectives.
   • A management tool for subsequent steps.

The Structure of a Research Project

The basic structure of a project results from a series of articulated responses to three fundamental questions: What is proposed for research? How has it been investigated? Why investigate this and nothing else? These questions are addressed within the project's inherent order, which in turn structures the social reality it examines.

A comprehensive research project typically consists of the following sections:

• Title
• Project Presentation
• Project Body

  Background

  • Delimitation of the field
  • Social significance
  • Conceptual definitions
  • Empirical data

  Construction of the Research Object

  • Methodological justification
  • Formulation of hypotheses

  Methodological Design

  • Methodological Justification (for the overall design)
  • Program or Plan:
    • Specific Objectives
    • Detailed Methods for Data Collection and Analysis
    • Schedule and Deadlines
    • Expected Outcomes or Deliverables
    • Budget
    • Composition of the Research Team