Different Layers of Saunders Research Onion

A Quick Guide to Saunders Research Onion (With Examples)

When you look for a guide on the research process, a name that is bound to come up is “Saunders Research Onion”. Why would it not? It's one of the simplest yet efficient frameworks for extensive research. And today, you will get to learn all about it. So let’s take a look at what it is, starting from its introduction.

What exactly is the Saunders Research Onion?

Now, the Saunders Research Onion is not really that difficult to understand. It's a theory that describes the best possible ways you can approach your research. After all, whether you plan on doing a thesis, dissertation or even a simple case study, your research defines it all. And the Saunders Research Onion basically gives you a framework or steps to do so efficiently. It includes these 6 steps:

• Research philosophy
• Research approach
• Methodological Choices
• Research strategy
• Time horizon
• Techniques & procedures

The steps go from the psychological and abstract concepts to the practical and definitive ones. Just like how an onion has many layers and you have to peel them from outwards to inwards, this method is the same. You go from the initial abstract thoughts, the outer layer of research, towards the fixed inner methods of completion. All you need to do is follow the steps, and by the end of it, you will have a clear idea of how and what you need to do.

1. Research philosophy

The first step, or say the first layer of the onion, that we have to understand is the research philosophy. It is the most abstract concept among the six layers, which is normal, given it’s the outermost one. The point of focus in this step is to understand your research thought process. As a student, you are going to do your research on a specific topic, so you have to initially decide on what you would consider acceptable knowledge. Sounds confusing, doesn’t it?

Just think of it as your definition of “Clear Data”. Now, what you consider viable is your own thought process. Commonly, there are three types of people, each with their own approach to this step. They are:

• Positivist: Think of this method as a data-oriented one. If “I don’t want opinions, I want Facts” were a philosophy, it would be this one. If you believe that the research exists outside your opinions, biases and what you know, is purely about facts and data, then it's this philosophy.
• Interpretivist: This defines the people with a completely opposite psychology as compared to the positivists. They believe that the data only gives a surface-level idea of the actual issue. And opinions are more important aspects.
• Pragmatist: “I don’t care, I’ll use everything that works”, is the thought process of the pragmatist. They are the ones who don’t care about the data, nor do they care about the opinions. What they want are the results, and they will use whatever source they have available to achieve their goal.

Let’s take an example to understand how different philosophies would act in the same situation. Imagine you are an employee making a customer satisfaction survey for your retail store. Here’s how different philosophical approaches would play out.

• As a Positivist, your approach would revolve around the factual data. You would look at the monthly sales report, the number of returning customers and newer customers. A growth in these would show a positive figure for the business and would hence prove the results. At best, you would do a survey with closed-ended questions to report their results.
• As an Interpretivist, you would look at the actual opinions of the customer. It's not about what they are buying, but more about what they want to buy. Whether the local community prefers a specific brand or type, such personal questions would make up your research methods. You would try to understand what they feel about their shopping experience and how you can improve upon it.
• A pragmatist approach would have you run around doing both, based on the situation. Are the customers willing to answer the surveys and give their opinion? Take it. They aren’t willing, then the data and trends will do just fine. It's a situational yet most practical way to resolve a research problem.

2. Research approach

Now let’s peel off another layer of the Saunders Research Onion and take a look at a bit more practical method. Now we will take a look at your research approach and choose one based on your requirements. Generally, you have two methods to choose from: Inductive and Deductive.

An inductive research approach has you looking at the data and researching your own theory. It begins with just the research thoughts, and then gives a generalisation based on your results. This is the preferred method when you are researching an abstract topic, with not much information on its results.

On the other hand, the Deductive approach begins with you having your own idea or a hypothesis. You henceforth use the research method to prove the hypothesis correct. As it requires a hypothesis and a strong deduction even before the research begins, it's preferred for topics that have their information readily available.

Let’s continue on the earlier example and continue the research from that:

• You notice that the social media, local community groups, and surveys mention a constant concern about the late deliveries. You had no theory, no thought on what might be the concern, you simply did your part of the research. And following the inductive approach, you find the issues and create a conclusive model of why the customers aren’t satisfied.
• Instead of researching blindly, you decide to approach the problem in a specific direction. You start with a hypothesis with a clear idea, like the customers aren’t happy because of the late deliveries. So you decide to test the idea and look at the customer's reviews, delivery dates, and you create a data-backed model.

3. Methodological Choices

Now we dive a bit deeper into the Saunders Research Onion and reach the more practical aspects of the theory. Here, you have to decide on what method of research you would choose. There are qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative research looks at the words, meanings, and thoughts as the basis for the research. While the quantitative method takes a dig at numbers and statistical tools to complete the research. Based on this, there could be a few choices.

You could choose a mono method and choose between the two options of qualitative or quantitative methods. Similarly, you could also choose a mixed method and make use of both the qualitative and quantitative data. It's one of the more preferred options among the learners.

Then there is also the Multi-method approach, where you choose one of the two methods (qualitative or quantitative) and use multiple options from their chosen paradigm. It seems similar to mixed-methods methodology; however, you only choose multiple methods from either qualitative or quantitative methodologies.

Confused? It’s fine, let's take a look at an example to understand it clearly.

• Say you wish to check for the customer's satisfaction with the delivery timings, and for that, you choose to take a survey. That's considered an example of a quantitative method, and since you only chose a single method, it's considered mono-methodology.
• Conversely, you decide to use both the customer surveys and their feedback after the deliveries to understand the situation. In such a case, you would have chosen both a quantitative and qualitative method. Hence, such a methodology would be considered mixed-method.
• Now, imagine you were to take surveys, note down their data and then choose to take customer interviews too. In this situation, you only chose to use qualitative methodologies, however, there were multiple ones here. This is how you use a single paradigm for multiple methods. This is an example of a Multi-method approach.

4. Research strategy

Research strategies are where you actually start taking practical aspects more into account instead of the abstract concepts. Here, you don’t have to think about your methods, you have already done that. Now is the time to decide on how you are actually going to answer the research question and present your findings for interpretation. While the third layer of the Saunders Research Onion (Methodological choices) gave a theory on what to follow, strategy is your actual choice. There are several strategies you can choose from. Let’s take a look at a few common ones:

Experimental research

This strategy depends on the cause-and-effect relationship between the variables. Here, you experiment by changing an independent variable and take note of its effect on the dependent variable. Based on your results, you would use it in your research. For example, if you were to add a supply of organic fruits to the store, would that impact the overall customer satisfaction? That’s experimental research.

Action research

When we think of practical steps to succeed, we think of action research. The name says action, so that’s what the method is all about. Here, the goal is to seek out an issue, make plans, act on them and then observe the results. Let’s get back to our troubled retail worker. Since he noticed customers were troubled by the store layout, he decided to make changes to it. Then the results from that were to be noted down and observed.

Case study research

A case study is more of a theoretical research methodology where you conduct detailed research on a topic. Then you use that research as your plan or strategy and make changes. This could be any detailed research on the topic that is as related to you as any other one. For customer satisfaction, one, you look for a success story from some other retail store and use their case study to make changes to your place itself.

Grounded theory

A more challenging approach to the research methodology is grounded theory. In here, the researcher would have to work from the ground up to create their own theory to resolve. Understand where the name comes from? As difficult as the method sounds, it actually is; however, you can use varied tools to develop this. For example, customer surveys could be used as a method to develop a grounded theory.

Ethnography

One of the most preferred research strategies and also the most commended one is ethnography. Here, you have to focus on the group of people that make up part of your research. Understand their needs, their choices and what they prefer, and based on that, choose for your research reports. Retail workers find it easier to use such a strategy as they just have to understand their customers' needs. Do they prefer dairy products or are they more inclined to vegan options? It can be assumed from the environment of your customers, and based on that, you can make your decisions.

Archival research

And the last research strategy that we cover is the archival research. Archives are the historical data collected by the researchers, and you use them to make your findings. In many research studies, the past data is available, and the students further expand upon it. However, this becomes challenging when the research topic is something new. For example, checking the customer satisfaction surveys from the past few months to understand the issues and their impact.

Each strategy has its own pros and cons, but which one works the best? Well, they all work and don’t at the same time. How? It's situational. Different issues require different strategies to resolve, and which one to choose is up to the researcher.

5. Time horizon

Still with us? Good, now that we have made it to the penultimate layer in the Saunders Research Onion and luckily this one's pretty simple. Every research takes note of a specific time point or period to make its findings. Well, this is called the Time Horizon, and that’s what we peel in this layer. Let’s keep it on point, there are two types of time horizons, longitudinal and cross-sectional. Following up on our troubled retail employees example, let's have a look.

Now, imagine the employees making a research report about the changes in customer satisfaction in the past few months. So he decides to carry on the changes from the past 12 months and report his findings. Well, this chosen period of 12 months is what defines his research coverage, and that’s the time horizon. Specifically, it's a Longitudinal Time horizon, as here the research was based on multiple points in time.

Conversely, the employee decides to compare the customer's satisfaction back in 2020 with today's results. In such a case, the reporting period is specific, and this specificity creates a cross-sectional time horizon. Both are equally vital and are used interchangeably based on the research itself.

6. Techniques & procedures

And finally, we have made it to the core of the onion, quite literally. This is the most practical step among the whole Saunders Research Onion, and all you have to do here is decide on the four main questions.

• What data will you collect?
• How will you collect it?
• What will be the sample size?
• What method will be used to analyse the data?

The answer, as you would expect, would be fixed techniques and procedures. Just remember the findings from the past steps and decide on the techniques based on that. Since we have made the whole guide based on an example, we will obviously continue on here too.

So, for the hypothetical situation, our retail employee would have his techniques and procedures fixed as

• Data type: Delivery dates and customer satisfaction
• Method of collection: Records and Surveys
• Sample size: A group of 100 with different age groups.
• Analysis Method: Mixed method with quantitative methods for delivery dates using tools like SPSS. And qualitative surveys for customer satisfaction.

A Quick Recap Of Saunders' Research Onion

Let’s do a quick recap of the steps we have learnt through this post. Starting from:

• Research philosophy: Your idea of the successful research (positivism, interpretivism, pragmatism)
• Research approach: Based on your needs, choose between an inductive or deductive approach.
• Methodological choices: Decide if you prefer a mono-method, mixed method, or multi-method.
• Research Strategy: The exact source for the research, like surveys, case studies, etc.
• Time horizon: The time points at which you will collect the data
• Techniques and Procedures: Data collection method, sampling method, and analysis methods are decided in this step.

Conclusion

And there you have it, folks. A clear guide to Saunders' Research Onion and understanding the research process. If you follow the steps mentioned here, you will be able to complete your research on time and without any confusion. However, if you still feel confused or stuck, then we can give some additional help too. At New Assignment Help UK, we have our research proficient experts, ready to assist any troubled student or researcher. You can connect with them at any time and get their complete support in your work. So, connect with them and make your research more rigorous.

Author Bio

Luke Robinson   7 years | master's

Hey there, I'm Luke Robinson, and I hold a master's degree in Philosophy. My goal with this blog is to simplify academic life for students, helping you tackle assignments and complete papers more efficiently. I specialize in providing academic guidance within the field of philosophy, from everyday assignments to in-depth dissertations. If you need any help with your philosophy papers, don't hesitate to reach out!