3.

4 Ethical consideration
Research ethics involves the application of fundamental ethical principles to a
variety of topics involving scientific research.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_ethics#Key_issues
Just as ethics questions apply across the life cycle of a project, consideration of
ethics should be built in throughout the proposal. When you are developing
your proposal, work through the next section of the guidebook on ethics in
research design. This section is focused on what you need to include in your
ethics statement, and in your assessment of risk and harm in your proposed
research.
http://www.ethicsguidebook.ac.uk/Writing-your-proposal-7
It is important to conduct research in line with ethical standards for a number
of reasons:
In order to respect and cause no harm to the participants
As a sign of respect for other researchers and those who will use the
research
It is a professional requirement particularly in some disciplines and failure
to do so may result in disciplinary procedures.
It is a requirement to obtain funding.
Failing to conduct research ethically could be embarrassing or result in
research (or the researcher) being dismissed or rejected by the research
community.
Research involving human beings, including using questionnaires and focus
groups, must be passed by an Ethics Committee whose job it is to confirm that
the research conforms to a set of ethical guidelines.
If ethics are considered, this should make sure that the work is acceptable to
the research community and other users of the research results.
http://www.methods.manchester.ac.uk/resources/ethics/importance/i
ndex.shtml

3.5 Limitations of the study
The limitations and delimitations sections of your research proposal describe
situations and circumstances that may affect or restrict your methods and
analysis of research data.
Limitations are influences that the researcher cannot control. They are the
shortcomings, conditions or influences that cannot be controlled by the
researcher that place restrictions on your methodology and conclusions. Any
limitations that might influence the results should be mentioned.
When considering what limitations there might be in your investigation, be
thorough. Consider all of the following:
your analysis.
the nature of self-reporting.
the instruments you utilized.
the sample.
time constraints.
http://www.bcps.org/offices/lis/researchcourse/develop_writing_meth
odology_limitations.html
Limitations of the Proposed Research: A limitation identifies potential
weaknesses of the study. Think about your analysis, your instruments, the
sample. Think about threats to internal validity that may have been
impossible to avoid or minimize and explain. For example, because of
logistical reasons you had to use intact classes.
Also explain things that you are not planning to do (and why you have chosen
not to do so). For example, the literature you will not review (and why not);
the population you are not studying (and why not); the methodological
procedures you not use (and why you will not use them).

http://peoplelearn.homestead.com/RESEarch/Module8A.html



3.6 Data analysis plan
By the time you get to the analysis of your data, most of the really difficult
work has been done. It's much more difficult to define the research problem,
develop and implement a sampling plan, develop a design structure, and
determine your measures. If you have done this work well, the analysis of the
data is usually a fairly straightforward affair.
The purpose of analyzing data is to obtain usable and useful information. The
analysis, regardless of whether the data is qualitative or quantitative, may:
describe and summarize the data.
identify relationships between variables.
compare variables.
identify the difference between variables.
forecast outcomes.
http://www.bcps.org/offices/lis/researchcourse/develop_writing_data
_analysis.html
Understanding of the data analysis procedures will help you to
appreciate the meaning of the scientific method, hypotheses testing and
statistical significance in relation to research questions
realise the importance of good research design when investigating
research questions
have knowledge of a range of inferential statistics and their applicability
and limitations in the context of your research

http://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/researchmethods/Modules/Data_analysis/
index.php




Chapter 4 Results
4.1 Descriptive statistics
Descriptive statistics are used to describe the basic features of the data in a
study. They provide simple summaries about the sample and the measures.
Descriptive Statistics are used to present quantitative descriptions in a
manageable form. In a research study we may have lots of measures. Or we
may measure a large number of people on any measure. Descriptive statistics
help us to simply large amounts of data in a sensible way. Each descriptive
statistic reduces lots of data into a simpler summary.
http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/statdesc.php
Descriptive statistics are very important because if we simply presented our
raw data it would be hard to visulize what the data was showing, especially if
there was a lot of it.
https://statistics.laerd.com/statistical-guides/descriptive-inferential-
statistics.php
4.2 Inferential Statistics
Inferential statistics is concerned with making predictions or inferences about
a population from observations and analyses of a sample.
http://sociology.about.com/od/Statistics/a/Descriptive-inferential-
statistics.htm
Inferential statistics are used to make inferences about an unknown variable
based on known descriptions. Making sure you have a solid understanding of
descriptive statistics plays an important role in taking this data to the next
step.
http://allpsych.com/researchmethods/inferentialconclusion.html