If you have already read our article that briefly compares qualitative. quantitative and mixed methods dissertations here , you may want to skip this section now. If not, we can say that quantitative dissertations have a number of core characteristics: they typically attempt to build on and/or test theories. Whether adopting an original approach or an approach based on some kind of replication or extension. They answer quantitative research questions and/or research or null hypotheses. They are mainly underpinned by positivist or post positivist research paradigms.

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They draw on one of four broad quantitative research designs i.e. quasi experimental or relationship based research designs. With the goal of making generalisations from the sample being studied to a wider population. Although often end up applying non probability sampling techniques. They use research methods that generate quantitative data e.g. They draw heavily on statistical analysis techniques to examine the data collected, whether descriptive or inferential in nature. They assess the quality of their findings in terms of their reliability.

tables and graphs that address each research question and/or hypothesis. They make conclusions in line with the findings. And theories discussed in order to test and/or expand on existing theories, or providing insight for future theories. You will learn more about these characteristics, not only in the fundamentals section of l rd dissertation, but throughout the articles we have written to help guide you through the choices you need to make when doing a quantitative dissertation. For now, we recommend that you read the next section, types of quantitative dissertation. When taking on a quantitative dissertation, there are many different routes that you can follow. We focus on three major routes that cover a good proportion of the types of quantitative dissertation that are carried out.

route 2: data driven dissertations and route 3: theory driven dissertations. Each of these three routes reflects a very different type of quantitative dissertation that you can take on. In the sections that follow, we describe the main characteristics of these three routes.

Rather than being exhaustive, the main goal is to highlight what these types of quantitative research are and what they involve. Whilst you read through each section, try and think about your own dissertation, and whether you think that one of these types of dissertation might be right for you.

route 1: replication based dissertations

most quantitative dissertations at the undergraduate, master's or doctoral level involve some form of replication. Whether they are duplicating existing research, making generalisations from it, or extending the research in some way.

In other words, you take a piece of published research and repeat it, typically in an identical way to see if the results that you obtain are the same as the original authors. In some cases, you don't even redo the previous study, but simply request the original data that was collected, and reanalyse it to check that the original authors were accurate in their analysis techniques. However, duplication is a very narrow view of replication, and is partly what has led some journal editors to shy away from accepting replication studies into their journals. The reality is that most research, whether completed by academics or dissertation students at the undergraduate, master's or doctoral level involves either generalisation or extension. This may simply be replicating a piece of research to determine whether the findings are generalizable within a different population or setting/context.

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Or across treatment conditions terms we explain in more detail later in our main article on replication based dissertations here . Alternately, replication can involve extending existing research to take into account new research designs. As a result, we call these different types of replication study: route a: duplication. route b: generalisation and route c: extension. We simply give them these names because a they reflect three different routes that you can follow when doing a replication based dissertation i.e. route b: generalisation and route c: extension , and b the things you need to think about when doing your dissertation differ somewhat depending on which of these routes you choose to follow.