Structure the Research, to Show How All

¶ … structure the research, to show how all of the major parts of the research project -- the samples or groups, measures, treatments or programs, and methods of assignment -- work together to try to address the central research. Creating an effective research design is likely to be one of the most difficult and eminently useful tasks in drafting a proposal. An effective research design links abstract and stylized concepts and questions with the empirical world's complexities and challenges.

A research design must at once be specific and highly flexible. It must be expansive enough to adapt these very complexities while still pointing you towards relevant data. The methods you use should be extensions of your substantive question and epistemological orientation. Contrary to some disciplinarians' claims, there is no single research model that one can or should follow. Numerous alternatives must always be considered and choices made.

By the time you get to the analysis of your data, most of the really difficult work has been done. It's much more difficult to: define the research problem; develop and implement a sampling plan; conceptualize, operationalize and test your measures; and develop a design structure. If you have done this work well, the analysis of the data is usually a fairly straightforward affair

The data analysis involves three major steps, done in roughly this order:

Cleaning and organizing the data for analysis (Data Preparation)

Describing the data (Descriptive Statistics)

Testing Hypotheses and Models (Inferential Statistics)

Conducting research in an ethical manner is necessary to create confidence in, and to encourage cooperation among the business community, the general public, regulators and others. There are some essentials for a good researcher they are as listed below:

Researchers should separate fact from opinion

Researchers must be objective.

Researchers should not be syndicators. And vice-versa.

Researchers should not be "format advocates."

Researchers should not work for competitors.

Research practices and the structural organization of the research enterprise are evolving in response to intellectual and social challenges and financial pressures. Forces that are internal and external to the research community are shaping the nature of research.

The exponential growth of knowledge is one challenge facing researchers. The number of researchers, disciplines, professional societies and publications has mushroomed and continues to do so. Individual researchers must monitor a vast number of research results and activities that have a bearing on their own particular specialties.

By definition, measurement must be objective, quantitative and statistically valid. Simply put, it's about numbers, objective hard data. A scientifically calculated sample of people from a population is asked a set of questions on a survey to determine the frequency and percentage of their responses. For example: 240 people, 79%, of a sample population, said they are more confident of their personal future today than they were a year ago. Because the sample size is statistically valid, the 79% finding can be projected to the entire population from which the sample was selected. Simply put, this is quantitative research. Qualitative research, is much more subjective than quantitative research and uses very different methods of collecting information, mainly individual, in-depth interviews and focus groups. The nature of this type of research is exploratory and open-ended. Small numbers of people are interviewed in-depth and/or a relatively small number of focus groups are conducted. Participants are asked to respond to general questions, and the interviewer or group moderator probes and explores their responses to identify and define peoples' perceptions, opinions and feelings about the topic or idea being discussed and to determine the degree of agreement that exists in the group. The quality of the findings from qualitative research is directly dependent upon the skill, experience and sensitivity of the interviewer or group moderator.