RESEARCH TITLE

What is Research Title?

A research paper title summarizes the aim and purpose of your research
study. A good title contains the fewest possible words that adequately describe the
contents and/or purpose of your research paper. The title is without doubt the part of
a paper that is read the most, and it is usually read first. The title should indicate the
focus of the paper, and should contain enough relevant “keywords” to enable readers
to find this paper when searching a relevant database.

Elements of Research Title

1. Course/Specialization
2. Observed/Perceived Problem
3. Research Gap
4. Ways of Getting or Processing Data
5. Respondents
6. Setting
7. Contributions

Characteristics of Research Title

1. Engaging
2. Succinct
3. With Essential Words Only (around 5-15 words)
4. Grammatically Correct
5. Seldom Uses Abbreviations

Importance of a Research Title

The research title plays a crucial role in the research process, and its
importance can be summarized as follows:

 Provides Clarity and Focus

 Attracts Audience and Readers
 Establishes Relevance
 Forms First Impression
 Increases Discoverability

Basic Parts of Research Title

1. Research Goal or Result

The direction or the target of the study. Refers to what you want to really do,
what you seek to investigate, examine, describe , explain, or explore about. Some of
the terms you may use to show the result in your title are the following:

Effect, Impact, Assess, Evaluate, Develop, Link, Correlate, Relationship, Innovate,

Factors (Affecting)
2. Research Variables

Variable

A variable is an object, event, idea, feeling, time period, or any other type of
category you are trying to measure.

Quantitative Variables

For quantitative research, we have to include these two variables in the title
which showcase a cause and effect relationship or an experimental approach, these
variables are the independent variable and dependent variable.

INDEPENDENT VARIABLE

Independent variable usually tells us the topic, the focus, and issue or
problem at hand. It is the variable you manipulate or vary in an experimental study to
explore its effects. It’s called “independent” because it’s not influenced by any other
variables in the study.

Independent variables are also called:

 Explanatory variables (they explain an event or outcome)

 Predictor variables (they can be used to predict the value of a dependent
variable)
 Right-hand-side variables (they appear on the right-hand side of
a regression equation).

These terms are especially used in statistics, where you estimate the extent to which
an independent variable change can explain or predict changes in the dependent
variable.

Types of Independent variables

There are two main types of independent variables.

 Experimental Variables can be directly manipulated by researchers.

In experiments, you manipulate independent variables directly to see how

they affect your dependent variable. The independent variable is usually
applied at different levels to see how the outcomes differ.

You can apply just two levels in order to find out if an independent variable
has an effect at all.

You can also apply multiple levels to find out how the independent variable
affects the dependent variable.

A true experiment requires you to randomly assign different levels of an

independent variable to your participants.
 Random assignment helps you control participant characteristics, so that they
don’t affect your experimental results. This helps you to have confidence that
your dependent variable results come solely from the independent variable
manipulation.

 Subject variables cannot be manipulated by researchers, but they can be

used to group research subjects categorically.

Subject variables are characteristics that vary across participants, and they
can’t be manipulated by researchers. For example, gender identity, ethnicity,
race, income, and education are all important subject variables that social
researchers treat as independent variables.

It’s not possible to randomly assign these to participants, since these are
characteristics of already existing groups. Instead, you can create a research
design where you compare the outcomes of groups of participants with
characteristics. This is a quasi-experimental design because there’s no
random assignment. Note that any research methods that use non-random
assignment are at risk for research biases like selection bias and sampling
bias.

We would then have the view of the problem to investigate when we combine
the goal and the independent variable.

Goal + IV = View of the Problem

DEPENDENT VARIABLE

A dependent variable is the variable that changes as a result of the

independent variable manipulation. It’s the outcome you’re interested in measuring,
and it “depends” on your independent variable. It is affected by the independent
variable which is usually the respondents.

In statistics, dependent variables are also called:

 Response variables (they respond to a change in another variable)

 Outcome variables (they represent the outcome you want to measure)
 Left-hand-side variables (they appear on the left-hand side of a regression
equation)

The dependent variable is what you record after you’ve manipulated the independent
variable. You use this measurement data to check whether and to what extent your
independent variable influences the dependent variable by conducting statistical
analyses.

Based on your findings, you can estimate the degree to which your independent
variable variation drives changes in your dependent variable. You can also predict
how much your dependent variable will change as a result of variation in the
independent variable.

Here are some tips for identifying each variable type.

Recognizing independent variables

Use this list of questions to check whether you’re dealing with an independent
variable:

 Is the variable manipulated, controlled, or used as a subject grouping method

by the researcher?
 Does this variable come before the other variable in time?
 Is the researcher trying to understand whether or how this variable affects
another variable?

Recognizing dependent variables

Check whether you’re dealing with a dependent variable:

 Is this variable measured as an outcome of the study?

 Is this variable dependent on another variable in the study?
 Does this variable get measured only after other variables are altered?

Qualitative Variable

Qualitative variable is a variable which is non-numerical or not quantifiable

and cannot be counted or measured (the values of QV simply do not imply a
numerical ordering) but instead is categorized through description, themes,
categories, and codes. It express a qualitative attribute such as hair color, eye color,
religion, favorite movie, gender, satisfaction, perception, belief and so on. Qualitative
variables are sometimes referred to as categorical variables.

CATEGORICAL VARIABLE
Categorical variables represent groupings of some kind. They are sometimes
recorded as numbers, but the numbers represent categories rather than actual
amounts of things.

Types of Qualitative/Categorical variables:

 Binary

A binary variable is a variable that has two possible outcomes. For example,
sex (male/female) or having a tattoo (yes/no).

 Nominal

A nominal variable is a type of variable that is used to name, label or

categorize particular attributes that are being measured. It takes qualitative
values representing different categories, and there is no intrinsic ordering of
 these categories. You can code nominal variables with numbers, but the
order is arbitrary and arithmetic operations cannot be performed on the
numbers. This is the case when a person’s phone number, National
Identification Number postal code, etc. are being collected.

 Ordinal

An ordinal variable is a categorical variable for which the possible values are
ordered. Ordinal variables can be considered “in between” categorical and
quantitative variables. Ex. Educational level.

3. Research Locale

Research locale refers to the specific location or setting where research is

conducted. It can be a community, school, institution, or any other defined area
where researchers carry out their studies. The locale provides the context and
environment for the research, influencing the data collection, analysis, and
interpretation processes. Researchers often engage with the local community,
collaborating and interacting with its members to gain insights and understanding.
The research locale is crucial in shaping the research outcomes and findings, as it
provides a unique perspective and context for the study.

To recall in constructing research title, it must include the following:

QUANTI = GOAL+IV+DV+LOCALE

QUALI = GOAL+CV+DV+LOCALE (note: DV here refers to the respondents of the

study not a quantifiable variable)

References:

https://www.enago.com/academy/write-irresistible-research-paper-title/?
fbclid=IwAR32t7sDXMrKthc8HNwBvzP_BnFYeRjuJGZJiMecKigTVSmlz96XTbdV8L
g

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q=what+is+research+title&oq=what+is+research+title&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggA
EEUYOdIBCDcyMDdqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.psu.edu/dist/6/16010/files/2011/03/
Components-of-a-Research-Article.pdf

https://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/help/user_guide/graph/variables.asp

https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/independent-and-dependent-variables/
#:~:text=An%20independent%20variable%20is%20the%20variable%20you
%20manipulate%2C%20control%2C%20or,explain%20an%20event%20or
%20outcome)

https://learn.saylor.org/mod/book/view.php?
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https://www.google.com/search?
q=binary+variables&oq=binary&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDAgCEAAYQxiABBiKBTIO
CAAQRRgnGDsYgAQYigUyEQgBEEUYORhDGLEDGIAEGIoFMgwIAhAAGEMYgA
QYigUyDAgDEAAYQxiABBiKBTIMCAQQABhDGIAEGIoFMgwIBRAAGEMYgAQYig
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https://typeset.io/questions/what-is-research-locale-and-author-4f1sh6fxkw

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categorical-ordinal-and-interval-variables/

https://youtu.be/k3oKbAHutuU?si=UN_o3VNRrambHTA8

https://youtu.be/TcSNySddYzQ?si=pNt7WtmP1aHxNsNe