Research Design and Study Planning
End to end planning and design of research studies to rigorously answer product, user experience, or scientific questions. Candidates should be able to translate business or product problems into clear and testable research questions and hypotheses and convert those questions into feasible and valid study plans. Core skills include selecting appropriate qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods, defining primary outcomes and success metrics, aligning sampling strategy and inclusion and exclusion criteria, estimating sample sizes and articulating precision and power considerations, designing recruitment approaches and consent procedures, drafting interview guides survey items and measurement instruments with attention to reliability and validity, planning data collection workflows and quality controls, and outlining statistical and qualitative analysis plans and integration strategies for mixed methods. Candidates should also be able to identify potential confounds and threats to internal and external validity and propose mitigation approaches, scope studies to remain feasible under time and resource constraints, plan logistics timelines and resource allocation, pilot and iterate instruments, address ethical and regulatory requirements such as institutional review board review and data privacy, and communicate research plans limitations and actionable findings to stakeholders. Interviewers may probe trade offs among methodologies bias mitigation strategies reproducibility and documentation practices how the candidate managed scope and stakeholder expectations and how preliminary findings or stakeholder input influenced the evolution of research questions and study scope while avoiding scope creep.
