What Is Research?

[k_nitin_r 8]

Pretty much a large part of the world has no real idea what research is. When Toyota comes up with a hybrid car, and Honda creates its own version, can we really say that Honda did not perform research as it simply produced something that already existed? Some people think a research paper is a survey of existing methodologies or a paper that puts together information that has been created over the years. Others think research involves spending time in laboratories trying to build better products, such as consumer electronics. Neither of these views are accurate as each of these views about what research is has its own pitfalls.First of all, research is not simple information gathering, though research does include gathering information. Research requires the formulation of a problem, setting of specific attainable goals, assumptions that a hypothesis adopts about a particular situation, and an interpretation of the results. Unless all of these criteria are met, an activity cannot be called research. Consider all of the information that the newspaper gathers - the journalists meticulously craft their words to state the details of each event, but that is called journalism and not research. Similarly, a student writing a paper summarizing the different methodologies that are out there to perform an estimate or a calculation is doing just that - summarizing information.Another misconception that some individuals have is that when one discovers some phenomenon by accident, it was an act of research. While it is true that some unexpected phenomena led to the discovery of certain facts in the historical development of science, none of these discoveries were purely the result of accidental happenings. They were all the result of carefully planned experiments from which the experimenter noticed a deviation in the norm or an unexpected occurrence. This unexpected occurrence evoked the need for further research in the area and after a hypothesis was formed, a methodology for performing the research activity was determined, and the observations were interpreted, we arrived at a theory that was the result of a research activity.Finally, most research does not guarantee with certainty that a particular fact is really true. For example, in the past people believed that the world was flat and proved - they could have done so in many ways, such as by placing a ball on the ground and noting that it does not move, or by laying a flat piece of wood on the ground and noting that it does not wobble. However, many many years later, someone had a doubt that the would may be round and with this hypothesis, went on by performing research. We are all familiar with the most simple method of proving this hypothesis - looking at a ship sail into the distance, one would observe that first the hull disappears leaving the observer with only the sight of the mast and the flag. Eventually, the mast disappears, finally followed by the flag. In other words, a particular research activity does not necessary prove a hypothesis to be true or false, but simply indicates that data exists to support a particular view.Let us take an example here on Trap 17 to indicate how research works. An initial observation by a web master would indicate that the members are not satisfied with the shoutbox interface. This becomes the hypothesis and the methodology to prove this statement would be to conduct a poll. The assumption is that members have not voted multiple times, have not hacked into the accounts of other members to cast a vote, or have not influenced other members in any way during the voting process. As a result, when the information about the votes has been gathered, an inference is formed determining the characteristics that members do or do not like about the shoutbox and corrective action can be suggested, if needed.

[webishqiptar 0]

I have made some research on research performing as a concept and bringing it to practice or steps to conduct a good research.

 

What is a search?

Research is the path to the main topic

 

Why do I search?

- To meet curiosity and interests

- Personal (family, friends, magazines, TV, Internet)

- Linked to the world of school

 

Research is a path divided into several phases:

1. choice of information

2. collection (something I find?)

3. examination and selection of material collected (what I need and what not)

4. the elaborate design

(as I will present my research)

5. given presentations (finally ... it's almost done!)

6. Compilation of bibliography (BOH ?????)

7. analysis results and debugging (not bad! however, next time ...)

 

a. choose the subject

b. collection of information

 

To make a good research we use sources of information and also different media:

1. books (encyclopaedias, monographs)

2. Electronic Resources

(encyclopedias and monographs on floppy disk

cd-rom, dvd)

3. Internet

4. film and video recordings

5. sound recordings

(discs, audio cassettes)

- Images (drawings, photos, etc. ... of different origin: made by us, books, slides, diskettes, CD-ROM, Internet)

- Moving images (VHS, CD-ROM, DVD, Internet)

- Audio files (disks audio cassettes, CD-ROM, DVD, Internet)

 

1. visit the section of children

- Books of fiction and nonfiction

- Order of non-fiction books on the shelves: back

- CDD: photocopy A3 color scheme

- Encyclopedias and monographs

- Consultation of encyclopedias (before and A. Knopf): cover, frontispiece, indices (various types)

- Research and consultation monographs

- Exercises: Dante Alighieri (Prima, A. Mond.) Islamism (č.s. monographs)

 

2. No multimedia workstations 2

- Encyclopedias and monographs; (another copy Encarta2000)

- As Structured hypertext (link) Multimedia

- Research on Encarta: text, pictures, images movement, sound; example: Dante Alighieri: image, audio; animations: volcano; Video: moon landing Virtual Tours: Amazon rainforest, Suleymaniye Mosque

- Print text and images, copy and paste.

If there is time to view a monograph: Cd'art: Leonardo show other cd-rom: only cases

 

3. Internet:

- Other services, web: distributed multimedia hypertext

- Portals (examples) and search engines (as used): Search Examples

- Printing, saving text (html) and images, copy and paste

 

4. examination and selection of material collected

- Assessed carefully everything we found and

- Choose information interesting for our research, in relation project ...

 

5. design the elaborate

How to submit the result of your search:

- That we'll support? (paper, cardboard, floppy, ...)

- Post images? and what kind?

- How to distribute the text in relation to the images?

- Which way will you choose? will we use a subtitle? etc. ..

 

6. realization of presentation is time to: write, cut, paste, draw, coloring put evidence ....

7. compilation of bibliography i.e list of sources we used for our research (books, diskettes, cd-rom, VHS, web pages, etc...)

8. debugging and analysis result

 

And finally ... rechecked carefully our work:

- To correct errors and

- To assess what we managed well and thing less.

 

Ingredients for a good research

a. time

b. interest

c. expertise in consulting information sources

d. creativity

e. patience

Edited March 10, 2010 by webishqiptar (see edit history)

[Rael IAK 0]

I believe that this debate pretty well centers around the fact that different groups of people have different definitions for the word "research". k_nitin_r's statement "Pretty much a large part of the world has no real idea what research is." tells me that he's noticed that not all people share his definition of the word. I don't necessarily agree with his conclusion though.

 

Having a MSc, I think I can speak for what qualifies as research in the natural sciences. As part of my education, I also took a number of psychology courses so I know something about research in the social sciences as well. Finally, as a person who's been around for half a century, I think I have a pretty good idea of what the everyday use of the word research implies.

 

k_nitin_r is defining research in a manner close to how a natural scientist would define it. All that is missing from his description is a reference to controlled experiments. In it's simplest form, a controlled experiment involves having 2 groups of identical individuals. Each group is exposed to conditions which are also identical except for one factor such as temperature, nutritional value of food, concentration of a chemical catalyst, etc. Since everything else was identical, any subsequent difference in the 2 groups can safely be said to have been caused by whatever factor was different. When enough other scientists repeat the same experiment enough times and get the same results, a particular theory becomes generally accepted.

 

In the areas of psychology, sociology, political science and the other social sciences, research is routinely attempted in a manner similar to that of the natural sciences. Social scientists face a rather difficult problem however. It is generally not possible to conduct a controlled experiment. To do a study on the effects of the environment on human development without the results being clouded by differences in genetic makeup would involve separating identical twins at birth and then completely controlling their lives. In other words, social scientists attempting to do a controlled experiment will likely be tried and convicted of committing atrocities against mankind. As a result, their efforts to collect information usually consist of doing interviews, questionnaires, etc. One of the problems here is that the data collected is subjective. This topic is a perfect example. If I put together a questionnaire entitled "What is your opinion of research into Area X of human knowledge?", both k_nitin_r and webishqitar would be happy to give me answers but they would not be answering exactly the same question. Generally, I will not know that though. One of the underlying assumptions is that all the test subjects have the same definitions for all of the words used in the questions presented to them. Based on my personal experiences, this is often not the case and it's also nearly impossible to determine how often it actually happens.

 

I often hear people who are not involved in either the natural or social sciences saying that they did research. I assume they are talking about something similar to what webishqiptar describes. It is basically about somebody (the researcher) having a question and using an organized and methodical approach to collecting information to help answer the question (the research).

 

I personally don't have a problem with calling any of these 3 approaches to collecting information "research". They are all different, yes, but not completely different. They all start with a question and turn into an organized way of finding an answer. How "true" the answer needs to be will depend on the question being asked. In my mind, I am happy to call them all different forms of research. Let's say Objective, Subjective and Informal Research respectively. I am in total agreement with k_nitin_r that some things called research are not close to being objective research but I'm not prepared to label one as "right" and the rest as "wrong". They are all valid approaches to gathering information under certain circumstances.

[k_nitin_r 8]

When I speak of research, I am referring to scientific research.There are different kinds of research, which makes it hard to define research as such. When research is performed to help in decision-making by addressing practical problems, it is referred to as applied research. Applied research can be further categorized into action research when the research targets a problem in the researcher's immediate work environment.Despite the differences in the types of research, research essentially involves two things - collection of data and the interpretation of data. Unless you see an interpretation of collected data, it isn't research.Looking up information to teach oneself something that already exists is not research. Research has to lead to new knowledge and not simply state something that already exists. If a study compares the data from two different time periods or it simply compares two different data samples, it isn't research because there is no interpretation of the data. For example, if I were to state that the rainfall this year is higher than the rainfall last year, that is not research.Performing research requires the definition of a research problem. The research problem can be found through existing literature, problems occuring around the researcher, and problems identified by professional journals and experts. The research problem is often stated as a complete sentence, defines the scope of the research study, defines the area of the research study, avoids making assumptions about the findings, does not attempt to prove a particular alternative, and is not a simple yes-or-no question.A research study involving the collection of data will have the researcher ask himself or herself about the size of the sample to be obtained, if it is not possible to study the entire target population defined by the study, the method to be used to obtain a sample, the means of collecting information, the analysis methods, and a way to maintain the confidentiality of the collected data or to prevent misuse of the collected data. This last question is perhaps more related to the ethical practices of the scientific community than to the research itself but it is important nonetheless.