Research design · Lesson 3 of 3

Feasibility is part of the design, not an afterthought

Test the binding constraint first. A design that survives contact with access, time, money and ethics is a real design.

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A design you cannot execute is not a design. Four constraints decide this, and they are worth confronting before you commit rather than three months in.

Access. Can you actually reach these people, this setting, this data? Access is the most common project-killer and the one people assume will resolve itself. If it depends on somebody's permission, find out early.

Time. A longitudinal design needs the time it needs. A systematic review is months. If the deadline cannot accommodate the design, the design has to change — or the question does.

Money and skill. Some designs need payment for participants, software, or transcription. Some need a technique you do not yet have, which is fine if you build in learning time and a problem if you do not.

Ethics. Some designs are not permissible regardless of feasibility, and some need approval that itself takes time. If your design involves vulnerable participants, deception, or sensitive data, that is a planning constraint with a calendar attached. Module 10 covers the substance.

The productive move when a constraint bites is not to abandon the question but to ask which nearby question you *can* answer well. A narrower question answered properly is worth more than a broad one answered badly, and it is usually the honest version of what you were going to produce anyway.

See it happen

Your design needs interviews with senior clinicians, and you have three months and no institutional contacts.

The read that arrives on its own

Start the project and arrange the interviews as you go — people are usually willing to help.

The same situation, with this idea

You test access first, because it is the constraint most likely to end the project. Two weeks of attempts yields one interview. Rather than spend the remaining time chasing, you change what you can reach: published accounts, professional forums, or clinicians at one accessible site as a single case. The question narrows and becomes answerable, which is a better outcome than a design that was never going to be executed.

After this, you can

test your hardest access assumption in week one rather than month three.

The takeaway

Test the binding constraint first. A design that survives contact with access, time, money and ethics is a real design.

Easy to take the wrong way

That narrowing for feasibility is a compromise on quality. A well-executed narrow study is ordinary good research; the compromise is a broad design delivered half-done.

Try this

Name the single assumption your design most depends on, and do the smallest thing this week that would test it.