Dr. V.

Darling Selvi
Assistant Professor
Rani Anna Government College
for Women
Tirunelveli
 Research is an organized and systematic way
to find answers to questions
 Research is a creative process
 It is looking into something.
 It is looking for something.
 It is comparing and contrasting things.
 It is finding out more information...it is

counting things ...making enquiries...being

curious...finding out what people
think...finding out what people do....finding
out what works.... finding out what doesn't
work...finding out what people want...
 Professional experience
 Burning questions
 Literature
 Professional meetings
 Discussions
 Objective
 Precise
 Verifiable
 Parsimonious
 Empirical
 Logical
 Probabilistic
 Observations
 Questionnaires
 Interviews
 Experiments
 Other Research
◦ Descriptive
 e.g., percentage of regular exercisers
◦ Relational
 e.g., link between age and exercise
◦ Causal
 e.g., effect of behavior change intervention on
exercise participation
◦ basic vs. applied vs. evaluation
◦ experimental vs. non-experimental
◦ analytical vs. descriptive vs. experimental vs.
qualitative
 Feasible
 Interesting
 Novel
 Ethical
 Relevant
 Feasible  Ethical
◦ Subjects ◦ Social or scientific value
◦ Resources ◦ Safe
◦ Manageable  Relevant
◦ Data available? ◦ Advance scientific
 Interesting knowledge?
 Novel ◦ Influence any practice?
◦ In relation to previous ◦ Impact any policy?
findings ◦ Guide future research?
 Confirm or refute?
◦ New setting, new
population
1. The variables under study
2. The population being studied
3. The testability of the question
 Variable: any observation that can take on
different values (eg., age, sex ….
 Attribute: a specific value on a variable (value
assigned to the variable)
 Quantitative
◦ Experimental
◦ Surveys (usually)
 Qualitative
◦ Attitude, Perceptions …..
 Mixed methods
◦ You can’t account for context with numbers
Variable Attribute

age
Variable Attribute

age 18, 19, 20, etc...

 Variable Attribute

Gender or sex
 Variable Attribute

Gender or sex Male, female

 Variable Attribute

satisfaction
 Variable Attribute
satisfaction 1 = very satisfied

2 = satisfied

3= somewhat satisfied

4 = not satisfied

5 = not satisfied at all

 Independent  Dependent variable:
variable: ◦ Something that varies
◦ has a presumed with a change in the
effect on the independent variable
dependent variable ◦ Outcome variable
(outcome)
◦ May or may not be
manipulated

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IV DV

Exercise
Participation
The "hourglass" notion of research
begin with broad questions
narrow down, focus in
operationalize
OBSERVE
analyze data
reach conclusions
generalize back to questions
 Written Reports
 Presentations
 Seminars
 Conferences
 Publications
 Policies
 Patents
 Supply to Media