User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
The design of my field research was relatively simple, which led to some paranoia about missing a key concept because of the simplicity. However, given the intended use of the data and the relatively small sample site, I am confident that the design was appropriate for the question.
One feature of the field research that turned out to be unnecessary was the detailed locational data that I collected. For each sample collected, I noted the exact location where it was found along the transect and in the plot. This information proved to be of little use later on. Collecting this data was probably the most time consuming aspect of the data collection, so designing a similar study in the future that eliminates that component would be ideal.
I was also interested to see how much human error or bias can be introduced into study designs and I have read other studies with a critical eye to this point. It is difficult to design a study which does not introduce some kind of bias, whether it is related to financial constraints, areas of interest, knowledge, or any number of other potential biases and errors that are lurking. This illustrates the importance of having many studies of a topic showing an observed effect before we can say with much confidence that there is a genuine observation being made that reflects the hypothesis. I can now appreciate just how difficult it is to design a study in a way that reduces error and bias. And even when that is done well, it is still important to note that there are some biases and errors which cannot be completely eliminated in such complex systems with the various constraints to doing research with limited time and funding.
