Introduction to research

INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH
Shahida baloch

SPECIFIC LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 To recall the definition of research
 To comprehend the process of research
 To highlight the steps followed in research

Research
 A GENERAL DEFINITION
 The systematic investigation and study of materials and
sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions
 diligent and systematic inquiry or investigation into a subject
in order to discover or revise facts, theories, applications

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 Specific Definition
Research is a process of steps used to collect and analyse
information to increase our understanding of a specific topic or
issue. (Creswell.J.W. 2002)

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 At a general level, research consists of three steps
 1. Poses a question.
 2. Collects data to answer the question.
 3. Presents an answer to the question.

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 Importance of Research
 Research Adds to Our Knowledge
 Educators strive for continual improvement.This requires
addressing problems or issues and searching for potential
solutions. Adding to knowledge means that educators undertake
research to contribute to existing information about issues

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 Suppose that you decide to research how elementary
schoolchildren learn social skills.
 If you study how children develop social skills, and past
research has not examined this topic, your research study
addresses a gap in knowledge.
 If your study explores how African American children use
social skills on their way home from school, your study might
replicate past studies but would test results with new
participants at a different research site.

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 If your study examines how children use social skills when at
play, not on the school grounds, but on the way home from
school, the study would contribute to knowledge by
expanding our understanding of the topic.
 If your study examines female children on the way home from
school, your study would add female voices seldom heard in
the research.
 If your study has implications for how to teach social skills to
students, it has practical value.

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 Research Improves Practice
 It suggests improvements for practice
 Armed with research results, teachers and other educators
become more effective professionals
 Research offers practicing educators new ideas to consider as
they go about their jobs.

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 Research Informs Policy Debates
In addition to helping educators become better practitioners,
research also provides information to policy makers when they
research and debate educational topics.

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 The only way to credit the validity of any information is
through research
Research helps explains things in a more detailed and practical
sense.You gather information from various sources, evaluate
and analyse each one until you come into a conclusion.
 As a result, you learn more through your research and you
gain more understanding about your topic.

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 Researching can help you in your decision making.
 For example, businessmen first conduct a feasibility study
before putting up a business to ensure whether their business
will be profitable or not.
 It can also help you in choosing a career in life or a degree in
college or in simple things such as finding the perfect place to
buy stuff etc.

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 Research develops your own credibility.
 Through research, you learn to back up your thoughts and
opinions with facts and not base your arguments on emotions
and hearsays.
 It also teaches you to be resourceful in looking for answers.
 instead of taking credit for another person’s idea, you can use
that information to add integrity to your work by citing them
as sources

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 THE SIX STEPS INTHE PROCESS OF RESEARCH
 . Identifying a research problem
 2. Reviewing the literature
 3. Specifying a purpose for research
 4. Collecting data
5. Analyzing and interpreting the data
 6. Reporting and evaluating research

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1. Identifying a research problem
 You begin a research study by identifying a topic to study—
typically an issue or problem that needs to be resolved
 . Identifying a research problem consists of specifying an issue
to study
 developing a justiﬁcation for studying it, and
 suggesting the importance of the study to select audiences
that will read the report.
 By specifying a “problem,” you limit the subject matter and
focus attention on a speciﬁc aspect of study

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 ◆Teens are not learning how to connect to others in their
communities
 ◆Teenage smoking will lead to many premature deaths

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 Let’s examine Maria’s research to see how she will specify her
study’s research problem.
 Maria plans to study gender based violence and weapon
possession in public places. She starts with a problem:
escalating weapon possession among the male culprits.
 She needs to justify the problem by providing evidence about
the importance of this problem and documenting how her
study will provide new insight into the problem.
 In her research, Maria will need to identify and justify the
research problem that she is studying.

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 2. Reviewing the Literature
 It is important to know who has studied the research problem
you plan to examine.
 You may fear that you will initiate and conduct a study that
merely replicates prior research.
 often fear that you will plan a study that does not build on
existing knowledge and does not add to the accumulation of
ﬁndings on a topic.

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 Reviewing the literature means locating summaries, books,
journals, and indexed publications on a topic; selectively
choosing which literature to include in your review; and then
summarizing the literature in a written report

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 To inform her committee about the latest literature on gender
based violence and to plan her own research, Maria needs to
conduct a literature review.
 This process will involve becoming familiar with the university
library holdings
 spending time reviewing resources
 making decisions about what literature to use, and writing a
formal summary of the literature on gender based violence.
 She consults the library catalogue at her university and plans to
search the computerized databases.
 In order to review the literature, Maria will need to become
familiar with the literature and visit her university library.

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 3. Specifying a purpose for research
 The purpose for research consists of identifying the major
intent or objective for a study and narrowing it into speciﬁc
research questions or hypotheses.
 The purpose statement contains the major focus of the study,
the participants in the study, and the location or site of the
inquiry.
 This purpose statement is then narrowed to research
questions or predictions that you plan to answer in your
research study

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 . Let’s check again with Maria to see how she will write a
purpose statement and research questions.
 Maria now needs to write down the purpose of her study and
formulate the questions she will ask of the individuals selected
for her study.
 In draft after draft, she sketches this purpose statement,
recognizing that it will provide major direction for her study
and help keep her focused on the primary aim of her study.
 From this broad purpose, Maria now needs to narrow her
study to speciﬁc questions or statements that she would like
her participants to answer.

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 DATA COLLECTION
 Collecting data means identifying and selecting individuals
for a study, obtaining their permission to study them, and
gathering information by asking people questions or
observing their behavior

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 At this point in the research process, Maria needs to think
about where she will conduct her study of Gender violence
and weapon possession,
 who will participate in the study,
 how she will obtain permission to study them,
 what data she will collect, and how she will gather the data.
 She needs to decide whether she will have males to ﬁll out
forms or talk to them directly to gather data to answer her
research questions.

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 Analysing and Interpreting the Data
 During or immediately after data collection, you need to make
sense of the information supplied by individuals in the study.
 Analysis consists of “taking the data apart” to determine
individual responses and then “putting it together” to summarize
it.
 Analysing and interpreting the data involves drawing conclusions
about it;
 representing it in tables, ﬁgures, and pictures to summarize it;
 and explaining the conclusions in words to provide answers to your
research questions.

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 If Maria collects information on a written questionnaire from
students across the
 district, she will need to enter the questionnaire responses into a
computer program
 choose a statistical procedure,
 conduct the analyses,
 report the results in tables,
 and draw conclusions about (or interpret) whether the data
conﬁrm or disconﬁrm her expected trends or predictions.
 If she conducts face-to-face interviews, she will collect audiotapes
of students talking about weapon possession at school and
transcribe these tapes to obtain a written record.

 With her transcriptions, she will engage in making sense of
people’s comments by selecting speciﬁc sentences and
paragraphs and by identifying themes of information.
 From these themes, she will interpret the meaning of people’s
comments in light of her own personal stance and the
suggestions found in past studies.
 For help in the data analysis and interpretation phase of her
study, Maria will need to analyze her data and make an
interpretation to answer her research questions.

Introduction to research

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