Creswell_Research_Design_ Qualitative Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches 2018 5th Ed

Chapter 8 Quantitative Methods
We turn now from the introduction, the purpose, and the questions and hypotheses to the method section of
a proposal. This chapter presents essential steps in designing quantitative methods for a research proposal or
study, with specific focus on survey and experimental designs. These designs reflect postpositivist
philosophical assumptions, as discussed in Chapter 1. For example, determinism suggests that examining the
relationships between and among variables is central to answering questions and hypotheses through surveys
and experiments. In one case, a researcher might be interested in evaluating whether playing violent video
games is associated with higher rates of playground aggression in kids, which is a correlational hypothesis that
could be evaluated in a survey design. In another case, a researcher might be interested in evaluating whether
violent video game playing causes aggressive behavior, which is a causal hypothesis that is best evaluated by a
true experiment. In each case, these quantitative approaches focus on carefully measuring (or experimentally
manipulating) a parsimonious set of variables to answer theory-guided research questions and hypotheses. In
this chapter, the focus is on the essential components of a method section in proposals for a survey or
experimental study.
206