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Whatever changes are to come, however, will be shaped by established traditions of research. My goal in this chapter is to review the basic elements of research design and provide a framework for matching methods to questions across different research traditions. Medical anthropologists come from a wonderful array of paradigms – positivist, critical, constructivist, interpretive, evolutionary, ecological, and more. It’s true that certain methods are associated with certain traditions, but no one tradition can lay claim to any particular method (Pelto and Pelto 1996, p. 294). As Bernard (2018, p. 2) puts it, “Methods belong to all of us.” The COVID-19 crisis accentuated this point, as fluency in a broad range of methods proved essential for adapting to novel circumstances, developing successful collaborations, and designing research that matters.

Research design is about posing good questions and finding empirical answers. The hallmark of well-designed research is that it justifies the claim that your particular answer is better than the alternatives. The goal is not to claim perfect knowledge – that goal is unattainable – but rather to generate systematic evidence that minimizes the errors of everyday reasoning and casual observation. Good research design thus requires researchers to be explicit about the methods and logic we use to connect theory and data, so that others can evaluate the validity of our claims.