The document provides an overview of the research process for students. It discusses the key stages of research including defining the scope, conducting a literature review, developing research questions and hypotheses, collecting and analyzing data, and reporting findings. It also compares the research process for students, academics, and industry professionals. Students start from a different position than professionals and must learn about topics before developing their own research. The document emphasizes searching literature databases and libraries to discover relevant sources and gain background on topics.
2. Sample Questions
1.Social Science Research is______________________________-
A. Searching again and again
B. Finding solution to any problem
C. Working in a scientific way to search for truth of any problem
D. None of the above
2) As soon as the research scope is defined, which of the following should kick-off the research
process?
A. Identify research questions.
B. Conduct a literature review.
C. Document a hypothesis.
D. Establish performance metrics.
3. Sample Questions
5) How would you define 'the research process’?
a) The researcher's plan of action to be followed when carrying out research.
b) A method of collecting research data.
c) The stages or steps the researcher follows in carrying out a research project.
d) The account of a study the researcher will write at the end of the study ready for publication.
4. THE RESEARCH PROCESS
This lesson will help you to describe the research process
and how to search and read research articles
5. Professionals in the Social Sciences field interact with all
or some of the elements of research as they carry out
their work. That is why you are taking this class. There
are many settings however where professionals formally
conduct research studies. These can basically fall into
two categories; Academia and Industry.
Thursday, October 20, 2022
Professional Research Process
6. Industry
• One example of industry research is The Abdul Latif Jameel
Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) a global research center working
to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by
scientific evidence. They carried out a research targeting
“Improving Electoral Integrity with Information and
Communications Technology in Uganda”
• The argument was many new and low-income democracies
like Uganda suffer from institutional weaknesses which
foster corruption including electoral fraud.
https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/improving-electoral-integrity-
information-and-communications-technology-uganda
7. Academia
• Academia is just another name for colleges and universities.
• Most faculty members at colleges and universities perform their
own original research.
• Professors have extensive training in conducting research and
often have a deep understanding of a particular research area.
• They are passionate about their area of research and read journal
articles as they are published.
• They often have several ideas about studies that could or should
be done.
• Professors look for sources of money from government and
private organizations who offer grants or contracts.
8. Student Research Process
As students, you will learn about how professionals do
research by doing a research study yourself, but
because you are students you are starting from a
different place than professionals. You:
•Do not have money to spend on the research
•Are not already an expert on a topic who has already
read research articles on potential topics.
Therefore, your process will look a little different from
the professional process.
9. Searching for and Reading
Scientific Literature
alias
Research Articles/Papers
10. What is scientific literature?
● Scientists communicate the results of their research to other
scientists primarily through the scientific literature
● Scientific literature is a permanent repository of scientific
knowledge and a record of progress in scientific enquiry.
● Includes journals, theses, dissertations, monographs, reports
Journal examples:
● KIU Journal of Social Sciences(KIUJOSS)
● Makerere Journal of Higher Education (MAJOHE)
11. What is a peer-reviewed journal?
● Considered primary literature: the first time the scientific information
has been published
● Peer review process: Journal editor asks recognized experts in the area
of study to give an opinion on whether the work reported presents new
scientific information, merits and deficiencies of the work
○ Peers determine whether the editor may accept the paper as it was submitted, or
may require minor revision from the authors, or may require major revision, or the
paper may be refused outright.
13. Where To Find The Literature
• Discovery, or background research, is something that happens at the
beginning of the research process when you are just learning about a topic.
• It is a search for general information to get the big picture of a topic for
exploration, ideas about subtopics and context for the actual focused
research you will do later.
• It is also a time to build a list of distinctive, broad, narrow, and related
search terms.
14. Elements to discovering the literature
• There are two crucial elements to discovering the literature for your review
with the least amount of stress as possible:
• The places you look and the words you use in your search.
The places you look depend on:
The stage you are in your research
The disciplines represented in
your research question
The importance of currency in
yourresearch topic
The words help locate existing
literature on your topic, as well as
related topics.
Keywords – the natural language terms we
think of when we discuss and read about a topic
Subject terms – the assigned vocabulary
for a catalog or database
15. Finding Sources: Places To Look
• Books and eBooks- eBooks appear on various publisher and platforms, such as
Springer, Cambridge, ebrary (ProQuest), EBSCO, and Safari
• The Library Catalog
• Databases-Anyone with an internet connection has free access to public
databases such as PubMed and ERIC.
• Google Scholar
• Dissertations Express – search for dissertations from around the world.
16. ADVANCED SEARCHING
•Search Operators-Literature review research often necessitates the use of
Boolean operators to combine keywords. The operators – AND, OR, and NOT
— are powerful tools for searching in a database or search engine.
17. What is a Research Article/Paper?
Document of scientific findings.
Scientific papers are the heart of the scientific community.
18. A research paper is an expanded essay that presents
ones interpretation or evaluation or an argument.
When anyone write’s a research paper they build
upon what they know about the subject and what other
experts know.
A research paper involves surveying a field of
knowledge in order to find the best possible
information in that field.
19. Two Types of Scientific Papers Containing Two
Types of Information
Review articles: give an overview of the scientific field or topic
by summarizing the data and conclusions from many studies.
Primary research articles: contain the original data and
conclusions of the researchers who were involved in the
experiments and how the experiments were done.
20. Scientific Article Structure
Scientific articles are broken into sections. You will find
specific types of information in each section. Here are the
sections:
● Abstract
● Introduction/Background
● Materials and Methods
● Results
● Discussion
● Conclusion
21. Interpretation
Body of a research paper
Introduction
What question was studied?
Methods
How was the question studied?
Results
What was found?
Discussion
What do the results mean?
22. Induction vs hypothetical-deductive method
• Generalise from the data without preconceptions
(induction)
• Grounded theory. Rigour is in process used to generate theory
from data
Versus
• Use data to test hypotheses or theories (hypothetical-
deductive method)
• Rigor is in the testing.
23. THE RESEARCH PROCESS
• Phase One- Conceptual stage
• Phase Two-Design and Planning Phase/ Proposal
Stage
• Phase Three- Data collection or research stage
•Phase Four-Data processing phase/stage
• Phase Five-Data Analysis stage/phase
•Phase Six-Reporting and dissemination phase /stage
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to measure the impact of letters warning of audits and punishment for election fraud, combined with smartphone vote-tally verification, on electoral irregularities. These results suggest that citizen and ICT interventions can improve electoral integrity in developing democracies.
They do this for several reasons, but generally universities encourage faculty to do research studies so their teachers can be experts in the field they teach.
Sometimes their university has enough money for them to conduct these research studies without an outside funding source but most of the time the professors have to find external sources of money to cover the cost of doing research.
You are starting at the very beginning of the scientific method. You will have to spend more time in the early steps to become an expert on your topic.
Impact factor: A grading of the importance of journals based on how often papers carried by the journal are cited in other scientific papers
Books are “essential guides to understanding theory and for helping you to validate the need for your study, confirm your choice of literature, and certify (or contradict) its findings. KIU subscribes to individual ebook titles as well as collections of ebooks.
Now that you have an idea of some of the places to look for information on your research topic and the form that information takes (books, ebooks, journals, conference papers, and dissertations), it’s time to consider not only how to use the specialized resources for your discipline but how to get the most out of those resources. By using a combination of terms and one or more Boolean operator, you can focus your search and narrow your search results to a more specific area than a basic keyword search allows.
Theory building vs theory testing
Phase 1: Conceptualization refers to the process of developing, defining and refining abstract ideas. This stage involves identifying and stating the research problem. activities include thinking, rethinking, theorizing, making decision, and reviewing ideas
Phase 2: The aim of this phase of research is to prepare a general plan of real research. As such, a proposal is developed and data collection or research instruments are designed among other activities
Phase 3: researcher implements all the plans that he/she made in phases 1 and 2.
Phase 4 it is time to systematically organize the data so that it can be interpreted and analyzed by researcher. In this phase the data collected are processed or prepared for analysis.
Phase 5: data are organized in an orderly, coherent fashion so that the researcher can discern patterns and relationships. analysis of quantitative data and/or analysis of qualitative data by use of statistical methods or non-statistical methods like thematic analysis.
Phase 6 dissemination means a process when results of the research are presented or published as: final research report from research project; lectures and/or posters at the congresses and conferences; papers in journals; or using the results in clinical or professional practice.
