Define and state the approach of your research project (10 points)
Once you formulate a research question, you need to find an approach to the research question. You may take a qualitative or quantitative approach. Qualitative research allows the researcher to gain in-depth knowledge of specific contexts, cases or cultures, to understand subjective experiences and concepts, and to look at less researched issues or new research ideas.  It is flexible and allows the researcher to adjust the approach along the way based on findings through the course of the research.
Here you will talk about which approach you will take in your research design, what are the aims of taking this approach, the advantages to this approach, and the disadvantages to this approach.
Consideration and Discussion of Practical Research Issues and Challenges (10 points)
Any researcher knows that research is not straight forward and there are always challenges.  Here you will talk about 3-4 issues and challenges surrounding your research. 
Here are some things to think about and to answer. How long will it take to collect your data – are there problems in this?  How long will it take to conduct experiments?  Are there any costs to carrying out the research?  What are the logistical issues?  How long will it take to write up your research?  Will you have problems to gain access to your data?  (Example: Do you need to visit Greece or Washington DC? How practical is the travel?)  Do you have the necessary research skills? For instance, do you have the ability to do advanced statistical analysis if needed?  Do you have sufficient interview technique knowledge to conduct in-person interviews?  What are other challenges?
What is the Type of Research Design? (10 points)
Now that you have looked at qualitative and quantitative approaches, you can look at types of research designs. Qualitative research designs are less strict and more flexible. These types of research designs can obtain more detailed understanding of specific contexts, cases and phenomena. A popular qualitative research design is the case study. This is a detailed study of a specific subject – a place (ex. country), an event, an institution, an organization, a political party, or an interest group.  The data can be collected via a whole variety of sources.  The aim is to get a full and holistic understanding of a focused case.
Another study is an ethnographic study.  Much like a case study, here you study a culture or a specific community, group (religious, ethnic, linguistic, etc.).  Data is collected by spending a lot of time with the group – immersed in the culture and carrying out close observations. The study focuses on describing, characterizing, interpreting beliefs, customs, social dynamics, etc…
You may choose a quantitative type of research design.  It may be experimental and test causal relationships.  Here you would define variables and measure the effect of independent variables on dependent variables. Subjects are randomly assigned and studies are usually conducted in a controlled environment. You may also choose a descriptive quantitative study.   Here you can describe characteristics, trends, other data with variables that are measured to get a clear picture of trends, relationships within data as they exist in the real world.  Polling data is one example of this.  Experiments are the strongest way to test cause-and-effect relationships without the risk of other variables influencing the results.
Discuss how you would describe your research design implementation.
What is your population, sampling or case selection method (10 points)
Your research design needs to clarify what your research will focus on and how you will choose subjects or participants to study.  The population is the entire group that you want to study and draw conclusions about.  A sample of the population is a smaller group of individuals that you will collection the data from.  By studying a sample you can draw conclusions about a population.
What is your population?  It can be countries, organizations, political parties, interest groups, people (demographics), ethnicities, executive branches in different countries, legislative branches in different countries, US states, etc.  If you focus on a precise population, then it is easier to gather samples that represent those populations.
Let’s use an example of online teaching and its effectiveness.  You cannot get a sample of all high school students across the US since the population is too large and varied.  Perhaps you can focus only on 10th grade students from rural schools of the 159 counties in the state of Georgia.  A more narrow population is helpful to be able to better draw conclusions.
Next, let’s look at how you might use a sampling method.  You cannot study the entire population so you need a sample within the defined Georgia high school population that you identify. Then you are able to generalize results.  Here are some sampling techniques that you may think about.  Probability sampling uses random methods and is used in quantitative research and allows you to make statistical inferences.  Non-probability sampling is used in quantitative and qualitative research, and the sample is selected in a non-random way.  Probability sampling is more statistically valid, but harder to do unless the population is small and easy to access – so most studies do non-probability sampling.  Yet the latter carries potential biases and has limitations.
A popular research design in qualitative research is the case study selection.  Here you want to collect as much data as possible about a certain case that interests you.  You need to clearly state the rationale, why you want to study this particular case, how it will shed light in a research area and other research issues.   For example, you might choose a case that seems to be interesting because it is understudied.  You might do a case study on a US political party that is running as a third-party competitor in the 2024 presidential election.   You might compare and contrast two institutions across countries to understand why differences exist.
Explain your method in relation to your topic selection.  
What are  your Data Collection Methods (10 points)
Data collection is important to the research. Data collection allows direct measuring of events, identifying variables, gathering information, getting first-hand knowledge of events, developing original insights, and discovering more about your research problem.
Surveys are methods to collect data regarding opinions, experiences, or characteristics.  Surveys are popular in the political context.  Surveys can be in the form of questionnaires or interviews.  Questionnaires ask a series of questions and are popular in quantitative research.  You can distribute questionnaires by email, phone, via mail or in person.  The questionnaire can offer limited options or choices and the results are data that can be collected from many people and analyzed.
Interviews are more important for qualitative research and can be done by a researcher in person, by phone, or online.  It allows participants to answer open ended questions in their own words and ideas can be explored in-depth in small or large groups.  The answers can paint a picture of a scenario and can be narrated and interpreted by the researcher.
Surveys, questionnaires and interviews are primary data collection methods. There is also secondary data collection.  If you do not have time to collect data from surveying or interviewing, you may want to use secondary data that is already collected to make a new synthesis in a subject area.  You can find government data sets, think tank data sets, surveys, and previous studies.  You can do your own analysis of raw data to answer new research questions or interpret data in different ways – ways that were not addressed by other studies.
Discuss data collection with respect to your research question. 
What are your data analysis strategies (10 points)           
Now that you have collected data, you need to analyze that data. For quantitative data analysis you may focus on statistical analysis.  You can use statistics to summarize sample data and test hypotheses.  Descriptive statistics will look at the distribution of the data or the variability of the data (such as standard deviation).  You can make estimates about the populations based on samples. You can also test hypotheses and relationships between variables.
In qualitative research, by contrast, your data will usually be very dense with information, observations, interpretations, or ideas. Instead of summing it up in numbers, you’ll need to go through the data in detail and interpret meanings, identify patterns, and extract the parts that are most relevant to your research question.  Researchers can do thematic or content analysis which focuses on organizing the information into key themes that make meaningful conclusions.
How will you analyze the data from your research question and why will you analyze the data in this way?
International Institutions & Final Research Design Paper