Research Design and Research Strategy in Methodology of Humanities Research

Methodology is one of the important topics in the philosophy of science that helps researchers by showing a systematic process to reach the answer to their research question. It guides them on "how to reach the answer to the problem" and prevents them from wasting effort and deviation from the research path. The methodology also studies and examines other sciences from a methodological perspective and plays a significant role in understanding other sciences systematically, diagnosing their current situation, and guiding their future dir.
This field of knowledge has several components and steps, and understanding them accurately helps to better comprehend this area. We believe that methodology is a process-oriented and structured knowledge consisting of two realms: "Research Fundamentals" and "Research design". The realm of research fundamentals itself has two stages: philosophical foundations and theoretical framework (paradigm), while the realm of research design includes intertwined stages of research strategy, method, approach, attitude, and technique.
This article, using a second-degree and philosophical view of the methodology process and employing a combined strategy and documentary, logical analysis, hermeneutical, and deductive methods, sought to answer the question of what research design and research strategy are.
On this basis, it examines the concepts of research design and research strategy. Researchers in the field of methodology have provided various definitions for research design and research strategy. However, this research does not accept competing views and has arrived at a new definition and an innovative depiction of the geometry of research design. It also provides a new definition of research strategy and considers types of research strategies to include descriptive, explanatory, analytical, argumentative, interpretive, critical, and combined strategies, offering new definitions for them.
When researchers face a research problem, to manage the research and make it operational, they should design a map and specify the research process. Research design is the process of planning and drawing a systematic map and pattern that consists of various components and steps. These components include strategy, method, approach, attitude, and technique, which are formed based on the researcher's philosophical foundations and chosen paradigm. The main purpose of research design is to specify the researcher's path from problem formulation to reaching the solution.
Research strategy is the first step in research design, and choosing an appropriate research strategy is the foundation of any research design. This is because the research strategy has a significant effect on all subsequent decisions that must be made during research planning and design. The research strategy is the logic and spirit governing the research and guiding it. Research strategy, as the most important part of research design, determines how the researcher examines a phenomenon or idea. The research strategy tells the researcher how they want to examine and analyze a phenomenon or idea when encountering it, in order to solve the research problem through this examination.
Research strategies can be divided into two parts: simple and combined. Simple research strategies include descriptive strategy, explanatory strategy, analytical strategy, argumentative strategy, interpretive strategy, and critical strategy. Combined strategies are the result of combining two or more simple strategies.
There are different types of research strategies, each with its specific application and characteristics:

Descriptive strategy: This strategy specifies how to obtain the answer to questions about the characteristics, limits, effects, and signs of a phenomenon and its relation to other phenomena. If the phenomenon under study is a text, the researcher seeks to introduce the explicit denotative and connotative meanings of the text.
Explanatory strategy: This strategy is the way of searching and exploring to find the cause of a phenomenon or idea in light of general laws. The explanatory strategy seeks to answer the why of phenomena or ideas.
Analytical strategy: In this strategy, the researcher breaks down and decomposes the phenomenon or idea into atomic parts and analyzes its structure, content, foundations, and implications. This process causes various states, branches, and possibilities to be raised so that the researcher can get closer to the answer to the problem after examining each of them and finally obtaining the answer.
Argumentative strategy: This strategy helps the researcher to seek to prove and justify their claim by asking questions such as "why is the phenomenon or idea like this?" or "why has this phenomenon occurred?"
Interpretive strategy: In this strategy, the researcher is faced with a set of meaningful elements and tries to uncover the meaningful connections between them and interpret the phenomenon. Using the interpretive strategy, the researcher seeks to convey the intention of the text and approaches the meaning that the text indicates.
Critical strategy: When the researcher encounters an existing description, explanation, interpretation, analysis, or argument about a phenomenon or idea and sees it as flawed and disorganized, they use this strategy to diagnose, critique, and refute that claim.
Combined strategy: This strategy is the result of combining two or more simple strategies. When the researcher needs more than one strategy to examine and analyze different layers or aspects of the phenomenon under study, they use a combined strategy.

The findings of this research showed that a correct understanding of the concepts of research design and research strategies plays an important role in correctly guiding the research process and achieving valid and reliable results. Choosing an appropriate research strategy considering the nature of the research problem, research objectives, and the field of study can have a significant impact on the quality and validity of research results. Also, this study emphasizes the importance of flexibility in selecting and using research strategies. Finally, this research emphasized the necessity of paying attention to philosophical and paradigmatic foundations in selecting and designing research strategies. This study can serve as a guide for researchers in various scientific fields and assist them in selecting and designing appropriate strategies for their research. Moreover, this research can pave the way for further studies in the field of research methodology and the examination of practical applications of different strategies in various specialized fields.