Topic: How do intelligence-sharing mechanisms contribute to enhancing homeland security preparedness and response?

For this week’s assignment you will write the Research Design section of your thesis. At this point you will have identified an appropriate research design as a result of writing your literature review and reading the material in this week’s lesson.

The following description for this section of your thesis is from the End of Program Manual (EOP):

Research Design/Methodology: Describes how the student will test the hypothesis and carry out his/her analysis. This section describes the data to be used to test the hypothesis, how the student will operationalize and collect data on his/her variables, and the analytic methods that to be used, noting potential biases and limitations to the research approach. It should include:

· identification and operationalization (measurement) of variables;

· a sampling plan (i.e., study population and sampling procedures, if appropriate);

· justification of case studies used;

· data collection/sources (secondary literature, archives, interviews, surveys, etc.);

· a summary of analysis procedures (pattern-matching, etc.); and

· the limitations of study and bias discussion.

Let us first review what is outlined in the End of Program Manual (EOP) for the Research Design section of your thesis:

Research Design/Methodology: Describes how the student will test the hypothesis and carry out his/her analysis. This section describes the data to be used to test the hypothesis, how the student will operationalize and collect data on his/her variables, and the analytic methods that to be used, noting potential biases and limitations to the research approach. It should include

• identification and operationalization (measurement) of variables; • a sampling plan (i.e., study population and sampling procedures, if appropriate); • justification of case studies used; • data collection/sources (secondary literature, archives, interviews, surveys, etc.); • a summary of analysis procedures (pattern-matching, etc.); and • the limitations of study and bias discussion.