Your Research Project

Designing, Planning, and Getting Started

Nicholas Walliman

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526482112
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Investigación y metodología de las ciencias sociales

With a calming, reassuring tone, Nicholas Walliman gives you the ability and confidence to plan, design, and prepare for your research project. The new edition of this bestselling book will help you:

- Explain research theory within the context of your own project

- Curate, structure, and format your literature review

- Anticipate the challenges of social media and web-based research

- Apply 'how to' tips quickly to your own research planning and design

- Monitor your progress in the field with checklists

- Develop writing habits to use as a springboard for dissertations, reports, and articles

- Build a foundation of practical, general research skills like time management, organization, and critical thinking to carry you beyond your project.

New to the 4th Edition:

- New step-by-step chapter on how to write a successful research proposal - New chapter ?Writing Strategies ? offers guidelines for different assignments to help carry students beyond their research proposal - More 'How To' examples of literature reviews, proposals and ethics applications - Expanded coverage of literature review strategies - more emphasis on accessing on-line resources and use of the internet - Enhanced checklistsof issues for consideration or tasks students should undertake in order to progress their work - More information surrounding online and social media research and implications on information sourcing, ethics, and methods - Increased coverage of the research methods section to include more practical support and additional information on mixed-methods - Further stresses the importance of avoiding plagiarism with an expanded section on this topic.

1 Types of Research and the Research Problem: Beginning Your Project

Aims

• To explain what research is, and what it is not, and the objectives of research
• To outline the different types of research
• To discuss the research process
• To introduce the concept at the heart of any research project – the research problem – and to discuss what a researchable problem is
• To warn of common mistakes
• To describe how to choose your research strategy and plan your research project

Introduction

The shortest way of describing the contents of this chapter is to say that it provides a starting point for your research efforts.

It introduces the concept of research as understood in the academic world, and contrasts it to the loose way the word ‘research’ is used in everyday speech. However, even in the academic world, the nature of research is the subject of a great deal of debate. The characteristics of scientific method are briefly explained, and the interpretivist alternative is discussed as one of the aspects of the debate about research methods. This debate is treated in much greater detail in Chapter 2. An overview of the research process is given showing various ways to illustrate it.

An essential early step in the process of research is to find a research problem. What a research problem is and how to find one are explained. The nature of your problem will, in its turn, influence the form of your research. It is this quest for a problem which forms the task in the final section, where what you have learned in the earlier sections is applied to your own subject.

Research problem

Key words are shown in bold and are repeated in the margin so you can scan through the chapter to check up on their meaning.

What is research?

‘Research’ is a term loosely used in everyday speech to describe a multitude of activities, such as collecting masses of information, delving into esoteric theories, and producing wonderful new products. It is important that a student or practitioner embarking on a programme of academic or practical research has a clear idea of what the word ‘research’ really means, and clears away any misconceptions that might exist owing to the word’s common use in other fields.

Term

It is, therefore, worth looking at a few of the ways that the word is used in common language to describe activities, often called research, which are not research in its real meaning, and also at some of the emotive language that surrounds the term.

These are some of the ways in which the term ‘research’ is wrongly used:

• As a mere gathering of facts or information: ‘I’ll go and do a bit of research into the subject.’ This usually means quickly reading through a few books or magazines to become better informed about something. Such information can be collected in other ways too, e.g. by asking people questions in the street or by recording the number of vehicles driving along a road. This kind of activity may more accurately be called ‘collection of information’, and can be carried out in a systematic and thorough way. It certainly can be seen as an important part of research.
• Moving facts from one situation to another: ‘I have done my research, and come up with this information which I present in this paper.’ It is easy to collect information and reassemble it in a report or paper, duly annotated and referenced, and think of it as research. However, even if the work is meticulously carried out, and brings enlightenment about the subject to the author and the reader, one vital ingredient of the research process is missing – the interpretation of the information. One might call this form of activity ‘assembly of information’. This is, as with the collection of information, an important component of research, but not its entirety.
• As an esoteric activity, far removed from practical life: ‘He’s just gone back into his laboratory to bury himself in his research into the mysterious processes of bimolecular fragmentation.’ While many research projects deal with abstract and theoretical subjects, it is often forgotten that the activity of research has greatly influenced all aspects of our daily lives and created our understanding of the world. It is an activity that is prompted by our need to satisfy our natural curiosity and our wish to make sense of the world around us.
• As a word to get your product noticed: ‘Years of painstaking research have produced this revolutionary, labour-saving product!’ Very often the term ‘research’ is used in an emotive fashion in order to impress and build confidence. If you ask for evidence of the research process and methodology, you are likely to be faced with incomprehension, muddled thinking, and possibly even worse: the product may be the outcome of mere guesswork!

So how can true research be defined? Box 1.1 suggests some alternatives.

Box 1.1 Definitions of research

The Oxford Encyclopaedic English Dictionary defines research as:

the systematic investigation into the study of materials, sources etc. in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions

an endeavour to discover new or collate old facts etc. by the scientific study of a subject or by a course of critical investigation. (OEED, 1991, p. 1228)

Leedy and Ormrod define it from a more utilitarian point of view:

Research is a systematic process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting information – data – in order to increase our understanding of a phenomenon about which we are interested or concerned. (2015, p. 20)

Dominowski is so terse in his definition that he seems to miss the point (see above):

Research is a fact-finding activity. (1980, p. 2)

Kerlinger uses more technical language to define it as:

the systematic, controlled, empirical and critical investigation of hypothetical propositions about presumed relations among natural phenomena. (1999, p.108)

Creswell clearly mentions the steps in the process of research, here about educational research:

Research is a cyclical process of steps that typically begins with identifying a research problem or issue of study. It then involves reviewing the literature, specifying a purpose for the study, collecting and analysing data, and forming an interpretation of the information. This process culminates in a report, disseminated to audiences, that is evaluated and used in the educational community (2014, p.11)

You could go on finding definitions of research, which would, as in the examples in the box, differ in emphasis and scope. What is certain is that there are many different opinions about, and approaches to, research. However, as a means of achieving a greater comprehension of our world, research distinguishes itself from the two other basic and more ancient means, those of experience and reasoning.

Briefly, experience results in knowledge and understanding gained either individually or as a group or society, or shared by experts or leaders, through day-to-day living. Reflective awareness of the world around us, present to a degree even in other mammals, provides invaluable knowledge. The most immediate form of experience is personal experience, the body of knowledge gained individually through encountering situations and events in life. A child learns to walk by trial and error, and an adult gets adept at decorating jobs in the house after renovating several rooms. When solutions to problems are not to be found within the personal experience of an individual, then he or she may turn to those who have wider or more specialist experience for advice, for example a solicitor in legal matters. Beyond this are the ‘experts’ who have written books on particular subjects, e.g. healthcare or the finer points of playing golf.

Experience

Figure 1.1 Knowledge gained from experience forms an essential aid to our understanding and activities in everyday life

Knowledge gained from experience forms an essential aid to our understanding and activities in everyday life. However, it does have severe limitations as a means of methodically and reliably extending knowledge and understanding of the world. This is because learning from experience tends to be rather haphazard and uncontrolled. Conclusions are often quickly drawn and not exhaustively tested, ‘common sense’ is invoked as self-evident, and the advice of experts is frequently misplaced or seen as irrelevant. Despite these shortcomings, experience can be a valuable starting point for systematic research, and may provide a wealth of questions to be investigated and ideas to be tested.

Reasoning is a method of coming to conclusions by the use of logical argument. There are three basic forms of argument: deductive, inductive and a combination of both called inductive/deductive (or hypothetico-deductive, or scientific method). Deductive reasoning was first developed by the Ancient Greeks, and was refined by Aristotle through his deductive syllogisms. An argument based on deduction begins with general statements and, through logical argument, comes to a specific conclusion. A syllogism is the simplest form of this kind of argument and consists of a major general premise (statement), followed by a minor, more specific premise, and a conclusion which follows logically. Here is a simple example:

Reasoning

Argument

All live mammals breathe. – general premise

This cow is a live mammal. – specific premise

Therefore, this cow breathes. – conclusion

Inductive argument works the other way round. It starts from specific observations and derives general conclusions therefrom. Its logical form cannot be so neatly encapsulated in a three-line format, but a simple example will demonstrate the line of reasoning:

All swans that have been observed are white in colour. – specific observations

Therefore one can conclude that all swans are white. – general conclusion

The value of inductive argument was revealed by Bacon in the 1600s. By careful and systematic observation of the events in the world around us, many theories have been evolved to explain the rules of nature. Darwin’s theory of evolution and Mendel’s discovery of genetics are perhaps the most famous theories claimed (even by their authors) to be derived from inductive argument.

However, deductive reasoning was found to be limiting because it could only handle certain types of statement, and could become increasingly divorced from observation and experience. Purely inductive reasoning proved to be unwieldy and haphazard, and in practice was rarely applied to the letter. Medawar (2009, pp. 10–11) quoted Darwin writing in his sixth edition of Origin of Species, where he said of himself that he ‘worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale’, but later on he admitted he could not resist forming a hypothesis on every subject.

When inductive and deductive argument were combined to form inductive/deductive argument, the to-and-fro process of developing hypotheses (testable theories) inductively from observations...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Summary of Contents
• Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Types of Research and the Research Problem: Beginning Your Project
• 2 Research Theory and the Nature of Knowledge: Understanding Philosophies and Approaches
• 3 Using Language and Understanding Arguments
• 4 Finding, Organizing and Retrieving Information
• 5 Doing Your Literature Review, Forming Original Ideas and Defining Your Research Topic
• 6 Honesty and Research Ethics: Establishing an Ethical Code
• 7 Research Methods: Choosing the Best Methods for Your Project
• 8 The Research Proposal: Planning and Structuring Your Ideas
• 9 Writing Strategies: Getting Started and Maintaining Momentum throughout Your Project
• Answers to Exercises
• Key Words Glossary
• References
• Index