INTRODUCTORY LECTURE ON

RESEARCH AND
SELECTING A RESEARCH TOPIC
BY

ID( )
 The question is ‘’What is Research?

It is an organized and systematic way of

finding answers to questions using scientific
principles and methods; and also drawing on
a variety of reliable and scholarly resources.
• Every research follows a set of principles or
procedures which are usually set by a scientific
body and that body determines what a
research is in that particular discipline.
• This is to say that not every investigation on a
topic of interest is a research. It must therefore
be well organized and systematic to conform to
the specifics of that scientific discipline.
• Research is partly a process of discovery and
partly a process of knowledge creation.

• Basically, research seeks to answer question or

number of questions, and the point is,
sometimes the answer is no but it is still an
answer.
Relevance of the Research Questions
• The centrality of every research is the question that is been asked.
For instance,
When a machine of the company get broken, the question that the
manager will ask to under why it did so may be different from the
question that the company’s engineer may ask on the same machine.
 At the End of the Research

At the end of every research, the question that is

been asked is that

‘’have you found solution to your research

questions?’’
Why the need for research to the
company?
 There are number of reasons why we do
research.
 Out of research, you can create or develop
something new and can cause something to
happen
you can also make sense of what is happening or
can explain what is happening. This is to know
what is behind what is happening through
describing and explaining.
For instance,
You can conduct market demand
research to ascertain why customers are
not buying certain product of the
company. This is to understand what is
really behind what is happening to the
product on the market.
 Research can also help to predict what will happen in all aspects of
the company.

For instance,
Out of this market demand research, you
can predict or make sales forecast for the
subsequent times ahead of you as a
company
 What happens in the absence
of research to the company
• In the absence of research people lean on
information from the authorities, traditional
leaders, common sense, media distortion and
personal experience as a common source or
knowledge. The company must make sound
decisions and cannot base on these assumptions
as source of knowledge
Personal experience
• For Instance, in other companies only males
occupy executive positions and they are
successful so we must do same.
• These experiences are not scientifically proven
and must not be lean on as a company
Common sense
• Women cannot do tedious works in the company
and for that matter any such positions must be
given to a man.
• It may be true in some cases but theses must be
proven by research in the company before
making decisions on such cases
 Authorities
• Woman must be submissive and must be quiet
when a man is making a decision without
interfering him of whosoever the decision is.
• Theses are sources of knowledge which is not
backed by scientific research and must not be
adopted.
• As a company, the basic source of knowledge must
be on scientific research
 The research process

These entails the activities, or the step by step

process of carrying out a research project.
The process could be looked at in 12 different

steps
1. The first one is to select a research topic

2. Identify the research problems

3. Then you determine the research Gaps

4. determine the research hypothesis

5. Then you determine the objectives of the research

6. After the objectives, then you determine the

research questions
8. Then the research framework follows

9. Then you move to the research design

10. The research data coolection

11. You the analyze and interpret the data

12. Finally, by informing others though write up and publishing

 SELECTING A RESEACH TOPIC
Every research have to identify why you are doing
the research.
So what issue are you trying to investigate on or
what topic is on your mind.
For example,
As a company you can focus on research areas such us
 e-commence
Employees behavior
How to increase productivity
Market research
Product innovation
For instance
• In my company, there is issues of petty fraud. These company also has
internal auditor and other employees.
In making research on fraud in the company, a topic could be selected
as;

‘’The role of internal auditors in detection and managing

fraud in the company’’
 Then you therefore design a
study(method) to help find answers
to that questions