Hello, everyone. Welcome to week three of this course on research methods. My name is Laura Neijenhuis and I'm a research assistant at IHS. I might be a new face to you now, but you'll see me some more the coming week. In the previous weeks, we learned about the problem statement, the research objective, and research question. After that, we discussed the theoretical framework and operationalization on the basis of your research. Now, we will look at the next step in the research cycle, the research strategy. The research strategy is the first decision we make when moving from the conceptual part of the research cycle to the technical design phase. This means that we will translate the research objective in question, the conceptual framework, and the operationalization into a technical plan, including a research strategy, material, and data, and the research planning. This week, we focus on the different research strategies that exists and can be used in urban research. In the video, you will get an introduction to these strategies and during the week, you will learn more about how you can make your own choices based on the research question and objective. This is crucial as you need to choose the most appropriate strategy in order to get the data you require to get a valid answer to your research question. So, how do you choose a research strategy? Well, when the choice for a strategy has to be made, it is actually the choice of what kind of approach to take when conducting research. It is therefore not just one, but actually should be a coherent body of decisions concerning the way in which a researcher conducts their research. Before making any kind of decision, you have to think about three dilemmas. First is breadth versus depth. To get the information you need to answer your question, do you need to obtain broad information, or do you need to gain more in-depth knowledge? Next, quantitative versus qualitative. Will you need to do quantitative research with a large number of respondents, or do you need to carry out qualitative research where you learn more about why and how? And finally, empirical versus desk research. Does your research question require empirical research done in the field you are studying, or would it be better to base the desk research with data from earlier researchers? These are all questions you need to ask yourself in order to be able to choose the right research strategy. This choice can be a hard one to make, and your strategy needs to enable you to find a valid answer to your research question. Therefore, the choice of a research strategy is closely linked to the research objective and the research question. In this course, we focus on four research strategy, namely, the survey strategy, the experiement or quasi-experiments, the case study, and the use of secondary data or what we also called desk research. In the videos that follow this week, we will discuss strategies in depth. These are all also the most commonly used strategies in urban research around the world. So, this was our introduction to research strategies for now. The next video will teach you which strategy is best in different situations. It will also introduce you to the concepts of validity and reliability. Thank you for watching.