The Research Process

Lecture 3
 Research problem and Methodology
• Suppose you want to go out for a drive. Before you start, you must
decide where you want to go and then which route to take.
• If you know the route, you do not need to consult a street directory,
but, if you do not know the route, then you need to use one.
• Your problem is compounded if there is more than one route. You
need to decide which one to take.
• The research process is very similar to undertaking a journey. As
with your drive, for a research journey there are also two important
decisions to make.
• The first is to decide what you want to find out about or, in other
words, what research questions you want to find answers to.
• Having decided upon your research questions or research
problems, you then need to decide how to go about finding their
answers. The path to finding answers to your research questions
constitutes research methodology.
 Research Process
• Identify and formulate the research topic or problem :
Select, narrow and formulate the topic or problem to be
studied and conduct preliminary literature search.
• Literature search and review : Read about the subject to
help clarify your research topic, questions, and methods.
• Critically review literature to compare your research with
what has already been done, and to give context.
• Research objectives, questions, and hypotheses Define
clear questions and/or hypotheses.
• Research approach, design, and strategy
• Select a research approach and design that will make it
possible to answer research questions and plan the overall
research strategy.
• Identify the data you want to record
• Data collection
• Data analysis
• The data collected are prepared in such a way
that they describe and highlight what was
found in the research.
• Generalisation and write-up : The researcher
relates the evidence collected to the research
question(s), draws conclusions about the
question(s) or hypotheses, and acknowledges
limitations of the research.
 Research for problem solving

• Problem solving can be broken down into a

number of separate components, each of which
requires information and analysis:
• identification of problems
• diagnosis of causes
• identification of potential solutions
• decision for action
• monitoring and evaluation of action and
outcomes
Phase I: deciding what to research
• The formulation of a research problem is the
first and most important step of the research
process.
• What Is a Research Problem? is the topic you
would like to address, investigate, or study,
whether descriptively or experimentally.
• It is the topic, phenomenon, or challenge that
you are interested in and with which you are
at least somewhat familiar.
Considerations in selecting a research
problem?
• Personal experience or Level of expertise
• you should have an interest in the topic
• Magnitude –Narrow the topic down to something
manageable, specific and clear.
• Relevance – Select a topic that is of relevance to
you as a professional.
• Availability of data

•
 Source of research problem
• E•xperience :•
• Experts that you know •
• Deductions from theory •
• Readily available problem •
• Review of literature
• •
 Evaluate the potential of the problem
• C
•riteria: •
• Will findings make a contribution to body of
knowledge?
• •Will findings make a difference for others? •
• Lead to definition of new problems or other research?
• •Really researchable? •
• Knowledge & experience in the problem
area? • Information or data available to you?
• •
Complete in the allotted time frame?
• •Simple enough for your first study
 Research objective
• Research objectives describe what we expect to
achieve by a project.
• Achievement of research aim provides answer to
the research question.
• Research objectives divide research aim into
several parts and address each part separately.
Moreover, research aim specifies WHAT needs to
be studied and research objectives comprise a
number of steps that address HOW research aim
will be achieved.
 Habits of mind
• You have four area of your life
• The academic arena, that is, school.
• The professional arena, your career, your job.
• The civic arena. Civic means getting involved with your
community,
• and the personal arena of life, which usually has to do
with yourself, your friends, and your family.
• Habits of mind refers to ways of approaching learning
that are both intellectual and practical and that will
support students’ success in a variety of fields and
disciplines
 Curiosity
• The desire to know more about the world
• When all of us are kids , we were very curious creatures.
• And we would ask our caregivers endless questions.
• Why? Why does this happen? Who does this? What is that?
• And we learned a lot as a result of our enormous curiosity.
• Unfortunately, when some people get a little older,
• by the time they get to college courses, they sometimes
have lost that curiosity,
• Be curious about everything in the world.
 Openness
• The willingness to consider new ways of
being and thinking in the world.
• Openness means being open to new ideas,
being open to people and their ideas.
• Listen to others even if you don’t agree with
them.
• Accept new ideas and don’t keep your
knowledge to what you are already know
 Engagement
• a sense of investment and
involvement in learning.
• It is holds true for other arenas of life.
• To be successful in your job, you need to be
engaged.
• To be successful in the civic arena of life, you
need to be engaged.
• And you need to be engaged with the people
in your personal life, as well.
 Creativity –
• The ability to use novel approaches for
generating, investigating, and
representing ideas.
• A new way of solving an old problem.
• Now, I've never tried this way before, but you
know what? If some one suggest it be open try
it, think of new ways of solving old problems.
 Persistence
• The ability to sustain interest in
and attention to short and long-term
projects.
• Persistence is related to engagement and
means sticking with something.
 Responsibility
• The ability to take ownership of one’s
actions and understand the consequences of those
actions for oneself and others
• Responsibility in any arena of life is crucial.
• It means if you are successful at something, don't be afraid
about taking credit for it, but if you mess up, if you are
unsuccessful, take responsibility for that, too.
• Acknowledge when you've done something that you're not
proud of,
• acknowledge when you've done something that's not as
good as you want it to be.
• Acknowledge that you could do better next time, and then
follow through and be better next time.
 Flexibility –
• The ability to adapt to situations,
expectations, or demands.
• It is , relates to openness and creativity.
• Flexibility means if you've always tried to do
something the same way, but you're finding
that maybe it's not as effective as you thought
it should be.
• , try a new way of doing it. Ask other people
how to do it And then give it a try.
 Metacognition
• theability to reflect on one’s own
thinking as well as on the
individual and cultural processes used to
structure knowledge.