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What is Research?
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What is Research?
Students have lots of beliefs about the nature of research:
IDEAS?
- A way to explain what you know about a topic
- An exercise in grappling with what others have said about a topic,
- and so on...
Research is nothing like that
REALITY
If all you want to do is summarize what other people have said and done,you are not actually doing research.
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Research is not
- Compilation of existing data
- Tedious explanations
- Boring details about things your reader probably already knows.
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A Definition:
Research is about a profound discontent, about a quest to discover more,about a desire to solve society's problems and make a better world.
In short, research is discovery and problem-solving.
It all starts with a question:
Where it starts
All genuine research is "problem-based"
The essence
The challenge is to identify a problem that:
- Is not something you can just look up
- Can be addressed with data
Solving problems requires data.
Where do you get it?
Data Sources
- From other scholars
- From experimentation
- From the history of work on the topic (literature review)
Data varies by discipline
Science - Experimentation, observation, etc. that provides data to answer hypotheses or question.
Social Science - Research with human participants, producing quantitative and/or qualitative data.
Humanities - Research with primary and secondary sources to provide enlightenment on specified problems/issues.
There is no room for opinion in research
Research needs a clear research question or hypothesis.
You gather data to present evidence upon which you base your response to the research problem.
Problem-based, data-informed, evidence-resolved.