Research Fundamentals

Study Notes

Research is a scientific and systematic search for pertinent information on a specific topic.
It is an art of scientific investigation.
The Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English defines research as "a careful investigation or inquiry specially through search for new facts in any branch of knowledge."

The purpose of research is to discover answers to questions through the application of scientific procedures.
The main aim of research is to find out the truth which is hidden and has not been discovered yet.
Objectives of research can be categorized into:
- Exploratory or formulative research: to gain familiarity with a phenomenon or to achieve new insights into it.
- Descriptive research: to portray accurately the characteristics of a particular individual, situation, or group.
- Diagnostic research: to determine the frequency with which something occurs or with which it is associated with something else.
- Hypothesis-testing research: to test a hypothesis of a causal relationship between variables.

Empirical research is characterized by the experimenter's control over the variables under study and deliberate manipulation of one of them to study its effects.
Evidence gathered through experiments or empirical studies is considered to be the most powerful support possible for a given hypothesis.
Motives for doing research may include:
- Desire to get a research degree along with its consequential benefits.
- Desire to face the challenge in solving unsolved problems.
- Desire to get intellectual joy of doing some creative work.
- Desire to be of service to society.
- Desire to get respectability.

Descriptive research: includes surveys and fact-finding enquiries, and its major purpose is to describe the state of affairs as it exists at present.
Analytical research: includes studies that aim to explain the underlying causes of a phenomenon.
Ex post facto research: a type of descriptive research that uses survey methods to measure items such as frequency of shopping, preferences of people, or similar data.
Longitudinal research: research carried out over several time-periods.
Field-setting research: research conducted in a natural environment.
Laboratory research: research conducted in a controlled environment.
Simulation research: research that uses artificial environments to test hypotheses.