RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Yin Hor, Ph.D.

yin_hor@npic.edu.kh
 Brief Bio-data

EDUCATION
 (2011) B. Eng., Civil Engineering, Institute of Technology of Cambodia
 (2014) MSc., Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (Malaysia)
 (2018) Ph.D., Structural Engineering, Hokkaido University (Japan)

RESEARCH EXPERIENCES
 7 Articles Published in Impact Factor Journal
 1 Article in Book Chapter
 26 Articles in Conference Proceedings
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Research Philosophy/Overview
What does it mean by
RESEARCH?
 Research Philosophy

 The term research philosophy relates to the development

of knowledge and the nature of that knowledge.

 Your research philosophy contains important assumptions

about the way in which you view the world.
 Research Paradigms

• Before a researcher starts to develop an experiment

they must first make a declaration and indicate what
their philosophical views are on the nature and purpose
and research.
• Different researchers even within the same discipline
have very distinct views what the point of doing
research is, and how to interpret the results of an
experiment, so they have to be up front about their
views.
 Characteristics of Research
Paradigm
• Ontology – Researchers view of the nature of reality.
What assumptions do we make about the way in which
the world works.
• Epistemology – What nature of knowledge. Researchers
view on what constitutes acceptable knowledge. What
is the relationship between the knower (the researcher)
and the know(able)?
• Axiology – Researchers view on role of value/ethics in
research methodology. How should the
researcher/inquirer go about finding out knowledge?
 Pillars of Research Philosophy

• Positivism (Reality)

• Realism (Objects exist in dependently of our

knowledge)

• Interpretivism (Understand the difference between

humans in their role as social actors)

• Pragmatism (Arguing that it is possible to work within

both positivist & interpretivist)
 Postpositvism

• If the positivists believe that using science we can

measure, classify and understand, then the
postpositivists suggest that this is true to a certain
extent, but that we must be carful not to forget that a
lot of our interpretation may be based on assumptions
and conjectures, and that we need to be aware of this.

• This approach focuses on the qualitative descriptors.

 Realism

 Is another philosophical position which relates to scientific enquiry.

 The essence of realism is that what the senses show us as reality is

the truth; that objects have an existence independent of the human
mind.

 In this sense, realism is opposed to idealism, the theory that only the
mind and its contents exist
 Direct realism and
critical realism

 It says that what you see is what you get: what we experience
through our senses portrays the world accurately.

 Critical realism: critical realists argue that we experience are

sensations, the images of the things in the real world, not the
things directly.

 Critical realists point out how often our senses deceive us.
 Interpretivism

 Interpretivisim advocates it is necessary for the

researcher to understand differences between humans
in our role as social actors.

 This emphasizes the differences between conducting

research among people rather than objects such as
trucks and computers.
Ways of Thinking
Ways of Thinking
Lateral vs Linear (vertical) Thinking
When is it Research?
 The research ‘onion’

Saunders et al, (2008)

 What is methodology?

 Practical explanation of how research is organised

/ planned / the ‘recipe’ : research strategy

 Theoretical explanation of underlying assumptions

that have gone into designing the research
strategy: research philosophy
 The research strategy

 Exploratory
 Description
 Explanatory
 What are you trying to find out?

Exploratory (the explorer)

 To find out what is happening
 To seek now insights
 To ask questions
 Case studies often used for exploratory
research – the questions asked: how /
why
 What are you trying to find
out?

Description (the detective)

 To portray accurate profile
 Requires previous knowledge
 Surveys are often used for descriptive
research.
 The questions asked often relate to
who / what / where
 What are you trying to find
out?

Explanatory (the doctor)

 Seeks explanation usually in the form or
causal relationships
 Experiments are often used for this form
of research.
 The questions relating to this research
often ask how / why
 Six assumptions of qualitative
designs

1. Qualitative researchers are concerned primarily with process,

rather than outcomes or products.

2. Qualitative researchers are interested in meaning.

3. The qualitative researcher is the primary instrument for data

collection and analysis. Data are mediated through this human
instrument, rather than through inventories, questionnaires, or
machines.
 Six assumptions of qualitative
designs

4. Qualitative research involves fieldwork. The researcher physically

goes to the people setting, site, or institution to observe or record
behavior in its natural setting.

5. Qualitative research is descriptive in that the researcher in interested

in process, meaning and understanding gained through words or
pictures.

6. The process of qualitative research is inductive in that the researcher

builds abstractions, concepts, hypotheses, and theories from details.
 Quantitative Methods

 Quantitative Descriptive
o Descriptive statistics: graphical and numerical techniques
for summarizing data.
 Quantitative Analytic
o Inferential statistics: procedures for making generalizations
about characteristics of a population based on information
obtained from a sample taken from that population
 Quantitative vs. Qualitative
Methodological Assumption

Quantitative Qualitative
Deductive process Inductive process

Cause and effect Mutual simultaneous shaping of

Static design – categories isolated
before study
Generalization leading to prediction,
explanation, and understanding
Accurate and reliable through validity
and reliability
factors
Emerging design – categories
identified during research process
Patterns, theories developed for
understanding
Accurate and reliable through
verification
 Objectivism, subjectivism and
Pragmatism

 Objectivism is the philosophical position which holds that

social entities exist in reality external to social actors
 The subjectivist view is that social phenomena are created
from the perceptions and consequent actions of social actors.
 Pragmatism holds that the most important determinant of the
research philosophy adopted is the research question.
 Theory, RQ’s and process

 All work needs theory – an abstract explanation of an event

or situation.
 If you want to test a theory (ie you are doctor) then you
have to use what is already ‘known’ – Deductive process
 If you want to try to understand (ie. you are an explorer)
then you may develop your own theory from the data –
Inductive process
 Deduction and Induction

 There are two main research choices: deduction and

induction.
 With deduction a theory and hypothesis (or hypotheses) are
developed and a research strategy designed to test the
hypothesis.
 With induction, data are collected and a theory developed as
a result of the data analysis.
 Choosing a methodology

 What sort of researcher are you?

 Eg. Explorer, Doctor or Detective? (RQ’s?)
 What assumptions about nature of existence do you (or your
discipline) hold? Ontology
 Eg. Scientific rationalist or humanist interpretive
 What information counts as valid ? Epistemology
 Eg. Positivist or Phenomenological
 What approach to theory are you taking?
 Eg. Inductive or Deductive?
 Major Limitations in Conducting
Research

 Time
 Costs
 Access to resources
 Approval by authorities
 Ethical concerns
 Expertise
 RESEARCH ETHICS AND
SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT
 What is Ethics?

 The discipline dealing with what is good & bad & with moral
duty & obligation

 Individual human opinions and beliefs Hard to define “most of

our moral responses seem to be more a matter of intuitions and
feelings than of reasoning and logical deduction – we are not
always the rational creatures we would like to be” Gross, (1996)
 Ethical Issues

 Justification for the research

 Access to
participants/Privacy
 Informed consent
 Potential harm

59
 Scientific misconduct

The violation of the standard codes of scholarly

conduct and ethical behavior in professional scientific
research
 Research misconduct: Johns
Hopkins Definition

… means fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing,

performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results.
a. Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them.
b. Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or
omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in research
records or reports.
c. Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words
without giving appropriate credit.
d. Research misconduct does not include honest error or honest differences of opinion.
e. Research misconduct includes the destruction of, absence of, or accused person's
failure to provide research records accurately documenting the questioned research.
 Forms of misconduct

 Falsification
 Obfuscation
 Fabrication  Bare assertions
 Suppression  Improper authorship
 Plagiarism  Misappropriation
 Self-plagiarism  Bibliometric inflation
 Ghost writing  Violation of ethical standards regarding
human and animal experiments
 Ethical relationships with supervisors

 The relationship between the student and the supervisor is

unequal and hierarchical.
 the supervisor plays many roles as "adviser", "promoter",
"boss", "teacher", "friend", "principal investigator” etc.
 This multiplicity of roles may lead to conflict
 the relationship may be or may seem to be coercive abusive
 A student must feel free to make their own decisions

63
 THE NEGATIVE DATA PROBLEM

 Can negative results be important?

 Are they publishable?
 Would journals full of negative results sell?
 If they are not published are they doomed to be repeated
wastefully?
 How can positive results be validated without knowing about
negative ones? 66
 Plagiarism

 Plagiarism is taking another’s work and passing it off as your own.

 In a broad sense we are all guilty of plagiarism many times each day.
 We often take ideas from others and don’t attribute them to their original
source.
 More often than not we don’t even know the original source!
 When we talk about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire or say, “To
be or not to be, that is the question” in normal conversation, we rarely
attribute the words to Gibbon and Shakespeare respectively.
 Plagiarism in Research is Usually
Quite Different

 True plagiarism is, quite bluntly, stealing.

 Sometimes a person just copies text word for word from a book or
article and pretends that he is the author.
 Or buys an already written paper on the web.
 These are quite deliberate aims to deceive.
 Plagiarism Extends to More than
Words
 One should always provide references for any
 statistics
 graphs
 tables
 numbers, etc.
 that one wishes to use in one's own paper.
 Thus, it isn’t just the words of another person’s ideas that one
should reference.
 Copy Direct Quotations Exactly

 Make sure that you write it precisely, word-for-word as in the original.

 Also essential that you enclose the quoted text in quotation marks.

 Failing to put someone else’s direct text in quotation marks and crediting the
author, may lead to accusations of plagiarism.
 Paraphrasing is often Preferable
to Taking Direct Quotations

 It’s often preferable to take down the substance of an author’s

idea in your own words, i.e. to paraphrase.

 The greater part of your paper should be in your own words with
appropriate documentation of the ideas of others.

 Of course, some direct quotation is fine – but always with citation.

 “Plagiarism” Sometimes Not
Intentional

 Many instances of plagiarism stem from sloppy research rather than through a
deliberate desire to cheat.
 Many students during the research process take bad notes, e.g. they write down
someone else’s text verbatim but forget to include the quotation marks.
 Later when they are writing the actual paper and they refer to their notes, they fail
to remember that the text is another author’s and not their own.
 A reader who recognizes the original text might think that the student has cheated.
And this may lead to tough penalties.
 So, the golden rule is to take excellent notes, write your whole paper yourself and
to document your sources as well and as honestly as possible.
 “Common Knowledge” and
Plagiarism

 It is not necessary to document every single statement.

 One need not give a reference for stating that President John F.
Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.
 This fact is common knowledge and belongs in the public domain.
 However, if you are referring to Historian X’s thesis that Kennedy was
killed by a crime syndicate and not by Lee Harvey Oswald, proper
citation to such a theory is requisite.