Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Fundamentals of Research
Fundamentals of Research
Definition:
Research is a scientific approach of answering a research question, solving a
research problem or generating new knowledge through a systematic and orderly
collection, organization, and analysis of data with an ultimate goal of making the
findings of research useful in decision-making.
When do we call a research paper scientific? Any research endeavor is said to
be scientific if
It is based on empirical and measurable evidences subject to specific
principles of reasoning.
It consists of systematic observation, measurement and experimentation.
It relies on the application of the scientific methods and harnessing of
curiosity.
It provides scientific information and theories for the explanation of the
nature.
It makes practical applications possible and it ensures adequate analysis of
data employing rigorous statistical techniques.
The Chief characteristics which distinguish the scientific method from other
methods of acquiring knowledge is that scientist seek to let reality speak for itself,
supporting a theory when a theory’s predictions are confirmed and challenging a
theory when its predictions prove false.
Scientific research in any field of inquiry involves three basic operations:
1. Data Collection: Data collection refers to observing, measuring and recording
data or information.
2. Data Analysis: Data analysis refers to arranging and organizing the collected
data so that we may be able to find out what their significance is and generalize
about them.
3. Report Writing: Report writing is the ultimate step of the study. Its purpose is
to convey information contained in it to the readers or audience.
Example:
The reading habit of newspaper of a group of residents in a community that would
be your data collection. If you then divide these residents, say, into three categories,
‘regular’, ‘occasional’ and ‘never’, you have performed a simple data analysis. A
reader of your report comes to know what percentage of the community people never
read any newspaper and so on.
Research methodology is a way to study the various steps that are generally adopted
by a researcher in studying his research problems systematically along with the
logic, assumptions, justification and rationale behind them. Whenever we choose a
research method, we must justify why we are preferring this particular method, we
must justify seeks to answer this question. Thus, when we speak of research
methodology, we not only talk of research methods but also keep in view the logic
and justification behind the method we use in the context of our research
undertaking. A researcher’s methodology aims at answering such questions as:
o Why was this particular group of people interviewed and not the other groups?
o How has been the research problem defined?
o Why were these particular techniques used to analyze data?
o What level of evidence was used to determine whether or not to reject the
stated hypothesis?
Method is what you actually did. It is a simple description. You selected, for
example, 100 rats and measured their weights. You fed some rats X and some not.
A week later you measured their weights again. Methodology is why that should
give you a meaningful result and why you used some specified method and not some
other one. This would in particular include the way you have controlled for errors,
e.g. why you fed the rats for a week rather than a month and why 100 rats you thought
were enough.
Research Goals and Research Questions
Goals/ Purposes Types of Questions
Exploration o What is the full name of the problem or phenomenon?
o What is going on?
o What factors are related to the problem?
Description o How prevalent is the problem?
o What are the characteristics of the problem?
o What is the process by which the problem is
experienced?
Explanation o What are the underlying causes of the problem?
o What does the occurrences of the problem mean?
o Why does the problem exist?
Prediction o If problem X occurs, will problem Y follow?
o Can the occurrence of the problem be controlled?
o Does an intervention result in the intended effect?