DOING A RESEARCH IN COLLEGE

Meaning of Research
In college, you involve yourself in varied school activities such as academic contests, sports fests,
elocution contest, music festivals, college week celebrations, art exhibits, research work, debate competitions,
and many more. All of these activities are aimed to let you develop a well-rounded personality. But one or two
of them gave emphasis in honing a particular ability (e.g., making you excel in mathematics, science, arts,
music, and many more).
One school activity that every college student has to excel in is research. This is a hallmark of a
university or college education. Your research abilities reflect the quality of your school. If you graduate from a
school with superb knowledge of research work, you can tell yourself that, “I am a product of a quality college
or university.” Hence, the greatness of a higher education institution depends on how knowledgeable its
faculty and students are about the ins and outs of research; more so, on the application of this to their
everyday life for the progress of the whole world.
What is research? A number of books on research define this term in many ways, but such varied definitions
boil down to the primary meaning of this word, which is:
Research is a process of executing various mental acts for discovering and examining facts and
information to prove the accuracy or truthfulness of your claims or conclusions about the topic of your
research. Research requires you to inquire or investigate about your chosen research topic by asking questions
that will make you engage yourself in top-level thinking strategies of interpreting, analyzing, synthesizing,
criticizing, appreciating, or creating to enable you to discover truths about the many things you tend to
wonder about the topic of your research work.
(Litchman 2013)
Research is analogous to inquiry, in that, both involve investigation of something through questioning.
However, the meaning of research is more complicated than inquiry because it does not center mainly on
raising questions about the topic, but also on carrying out a particular order of research stages. Each stage of
the research process is not an individual task because the knowledge you obtain through each stage comes not
only from yourself but other people as well. Thus, similar to inquiry, research involves cooperative learning.
Central to research is your way of discovering new knowledge, applying knowledge in various ways as
well as seeing relationships of ideas, events, and situations. Research then puts you in a context where a
problem exists. You have to collect facts or information, study such data, and come up with a solution to the
problem based on the results of your analysis. It is a process requiring you to work logically or systematically
and collaboratively with others.
To sum up your concepts about the nature of research, the following will give you the characteristics,
purposes, classification, types of, and approaches to research.
(Badke 2012; Silverman 2013; De Mey 2013)
Characteristics of Research:
1. Accuracy. It must give correct or accurate data, which the footnotes, notes, and bibliographical entries should
honestly and appropriately documented or acknowledged.
2. Objectiveness. It must deal with facts, not with mere opinions arising from assumptions, generalizations,
predictions, or conclusions.
3. Timeliness. It must work on a topic that is fresh, new, and interesting to the present society.
4. Relevance. Its topic must be instrumental in improving society or in solving problems affecting the lives of
people in a community.
5. Clarity. It must succeed in expressing its central point or discoveries by using simple, direct, concise, and
correct language.
6. Systematic. It must take place in an organized or orderly manner.
Purposes of Research:
1. To learn how to work independently
2. To learn how to work scientifically or systematically
3. To have an in-depth knowledge of something
4. To elevate your mental abilities by letting you think in higher-order thinking strategies (HOTS) of inferring,
evaluating, synthesizing, appreciating, applying, and creating
5. To improve your reading and writing skills
6. To be familiar with the basic tools of research and the various techniques of gathering data and of presenting
research findings
7. To free yourself, to a certain extent, from the domination or strong influence of a single textbook or of the
professor’s lone viewpoint or spoon feeding