INTRODUCTION TO

RESEARCH
Topic ONE
What is Research?
 Research can be defined as an organised,
systematic, critical, objective, scientific
investigation into a specific problem, undertaken
with the purpose of finding answers or solutions to
it
What is Research?
 What do we mean by organized and systematic?
 Research must be well planned
 For example, we need to develop our theoretical framework
before we start research design; we need to develop research
design before carrying out actual research
 Research must adopt a specific method and techniques
 Suitability of research method and techniques depends on our
research question and research objectives
 Research must follow ordered steps
 For example, we need to carry out literature review before we
can develop our theoretical framework, and only when our
theoretical framework is satisfactory, we then create our
hypothesis statements
What is Research?
 What do we mean by being critical?
 As researchers, we must question every information we uncover
 Can we trust the source of the information?
 Does the information make sense?
 Are there other explanations to challenge this information?
 As researchers, we must not easily believe what we uncover
 Have we made sure our measurement instruments are valid and
reliable?
 Have we collected enough evidence (is our sample size big enough)?
 What is the possibility that we may be wrong to believe what we
have uncovered?
 As researchers, we must do tests to verify what we want to
conclude
What is Research?
 What do we mean by being objective?
 As researchers, we cannot allow our personal beliefs
and judgments interfere with the decisions we make in
our research
 In quantitative research, we develop and use valid and
reliable instruments to objectively measure (capture) data; it
does not matter who uses these instruments, we should get
the same results
 As researchers, we cannot allow our personal beliefs
and judgments influence the outcome of our research
Scientific Research
 In this course, research refers to scientific research – a
process of establishing knowledge through validated,
verified and reliable empirical data
 Validity refers to relevance, appropriateness
 For example, a thermometer is a valid (appropriate) instrument to
measure body temperature
 Verification refers to ability to show proof (evidence)
 For example, an applicant may be qualified for an executive post
by showing her degree and academic transcript
 Reliability refers to integrity, consistency (can be trusted)
 For example, if we were to step onto a weighing scale five times,
and it consistently display the same body weight, then the
weighing scale is reliable
What is Science?
 “Science is the systematic study of anything that
can be examined, tested, and verified”
 Knowledge based on science are those that are logical
(make sense) and were derived by analyzing empirical
evidence
 “Science is organized knowledge subject to
empirical disproof”
 Even if scientific knowledge is widely accepted, they
are continuously challenged
What is Science?
 Central components of science
 Empiricism (the use of empirical evidence)
 Believe in what can be seen, measured and tested
 Rationalism (the practice of logical reasoning)
 Believe in what make sense, and explained through logic
 Skepticism (possessing a skeptical attitude)
 Always be skeptical about everything; do not easily believe
what you read, see or hear
Reasoning
 Reasoning is the process of coming to a
conclusion; “how did our brains figure out what we
believe”
 There are two basic ways we reason
 Inductive reasoning
 Deductive reasoning
Induction
 Inductive reasoning is the process of arriving at a
conclusion based on a set of observations
 Induction is a process where we observe details of a
certain phenomena and based on the evidences we
have collected and analysed, we arrive at
conclusions
 We build theories from data we collect and analyze
Induction
 Induce means to add up (individual evidences add up to
become a theory)
 Inductive research begins its research process with studying
specific data, which is then used to develop (induce) general
explanation (a theory) to account for the data
 For example, throughout my life, every crow I come across is
black in color; therefore, I induce that all crows are black in
color
 The power of inductive reasoning does not lie in its ability to
prove (in fact, it cannot be used to provide proof); inductive
reasoning is valuable because it allows us to form ideas
Deduction
 Deduct means to reduce
 use a general theory to develop a hypothesis
 a hypothesis is unique example of a general theory
 Evidence to support a hypothesis strengthen a general theory
 Deduction is the process by which we arrive at a reasoned
conclusion by logically generalizing from a known fact
 A type of research in which a specific expectation is deduced
from a general theoretical premise and then tested with data
that have been collected for their purpose
 A deductive researcher states her expectations in advance and
then designs a fair test of those expectations
Deduction
The following are examples of how deductive
researchers use theory and hypothesis to do research

Generalization Hypothesis
Punishment will reduce the Spouse abusers who are
propensity to commit crime arrested and punished are less
likely to repeat abuse
Extrinsic rewards (such as Rise in salary will not increase
money) will not increase employee motivation
motivation to work
Falsification
 Sir Karl Popper stated that science advances by
deductive falsification through a process of
"conjectures and refutations”
 Falsifiability is an important concept in the
philosophy of science that amounts to the
apparently paradoxical idea that a proposition or
theory cannot be scientific if it does not admit
consideration of the possibility of its being false.
Falsification
 "Falsifiable" does not mean "false“
 A theory should be scientific if and only if it is
falsifiable
 For a proposition to be falsifiable, it must be
possible in principle to make an observation that
would show the proposition to be false, even if that
observation has not been made
 For example, the proposition "All crows are black"
would be falsified by observing one white crow.
Quantitative verses Qualitative Research

 Research methodology involves epistemology of doing

research and its influence of what methods to use
 Each research method available to researchers is created
and designed based on a distinguished belief of how truth
and understanding can be established
 Is there only one (shared) Reality or each of us creates our own
reality?
 Can meaning and what we believe is real be independent from
the researcher?
Quantitative verses Qualitative Research

Qualitative Quantitative
Inductive inquiry Deductive inquiry

Understanding social phenomena Relationships, effects and causes

A-theoretical or Grounded theory Theory based

Holistic inquiry Focused on individual variables

Context specific Context-free

Observer as participant Detached role of researcher

Narrative description Statistical analysis

Characteristics of Scientific Research
 Distinguishing characteristics
 Purposive
 Research should have clearly defined objective (for example: to see if there
is a relationship between listening to music and digestion)
 Research should have a research objective and research question; a ‘burning
question’ that drives our research
 Rigor
 From the beginning of the research process to its conclusion, effort must be
made to ensure errors are eliminated in every procedure we use
 Carefulness, thoroughness and “leave no stones unturned”
 Testability
 Research hypothesis / theory chosen can be tested to be true or false
 “Sunsets are beautiful,” “Fishes are happy when they are young” and “Ghosts
like to scare people” cannot be tested
Characteristics of Scientific Research
 Distinguishing characteristics
 Replicability
 Scientific research must be designed to be replicated by others or replicable
in other places and at other times
 Replicability of a research is a quality that if a research is repeated, we will
be able to derive the same result (outcome)
 Precision
 This is a measure of how close the measure is to the real value being
measured (for example, a weighing machine may display your weight to be
68 kilogram whereas your actual weight is 67.9 kilogram; this is pretty
accurate)
Characteristics of Scientific Research
 Distinguishing characteristics
 Confidence
 Most test results cannot claim that it describes all cases. There might be
aberrations (random variations) that does not conform to the results.
Therefore, test results must state the level of confidence (p-value)
 A 95 % level of confidence means that there is a probability of being correct
95 % of the time, and there is a probability of being wrong 5 % of the time
 Objectivity
 Results must be based on facts and not emotional values. The conduct of
the research must not be influenced by biasness or pre-conceived notions of
the researcher. Any researcher that carries out the exact research should get
the same results. The focus and success of research are based on the quality
of the measurement instrument (validity, reliability) and not on the qualities
of the researcher
 Distinguishing characteristics
 Generalisability
 The goal of any scientific research is to create or strengthen theories and
develop scientific laws that can explain the laws that govern this universe
we live
 The value and strength of a theory is its ability to explain a phenomena in
many context (situations)
 Parsimony
 Each scientific research must be designed to test a very specific
phenomenon with clearly defined boundaries and limitations
 Research objective must be very focused and simple (not many variables
tested)
Types of Research
 What differentiates applied research and basic
research is not the methods used but its purpose
 Applied Research
 Solve current problem demanding a timely solution
 Basic (fundamental or pure) Research
 To generate a body of knowledge by trying to comprehend
how certain problems that occur can be solved
General Methods of Research
 There are many widely acceptable methods to
carrying out research
 There is no “best” method
 The suitability of each method depends on the
research question and research objective
General Methods of Research
 Experimental research
 Experiments are performed in an artificial environment where
variables can be fully controlled by the researcher
 Experimental variables are deliberately manipulated to
determine the effects of that variation
 Quasi-Experimental research
 This approach is similar to experimental research in that one or
more experimental variables are manipulated
 Rather than having participants randomly assigned to
experimental treatment, “naturally” assembled groups are used
in the research
General Methods of Research
 Survey research
 No experimental variables manipulated
 Observation or self-administered questionnaires are used to
collect data
 Historical research
 Study a problem, issue, a phenomena that took place in the past
 Information collected from the past serve as data to be interpreted
 Ethnographic research
 In depth, analytical description of a specific culture
 Try to answer the question of (1) how culture affects behavior,
and (2) how cultural processes develop through time
 Observation, description, qualitative judgment or interpretations
of whatever phenomena studied
General Methods of Research
 Observation
 In naturalistic observational research, the observer does
not intervene with what she is trying to study
 The researcher is invisible and works hard not to
interrupt the natural dynamics of the situation being
investigated
 Case study
 A case study is an intensive study of a specific group of
people or a specific organization. Typically, the case
study may involve interviews, observation, experiments
and tests.