Introduction to Research

Unit 1: Introduction to Research

Lesson 1.1: Basic Concepts of Research 

Objective of this Lesson

1. Concept of Research
2. Source of Knowledge
3. Characteristics of scientific method
4. Purpose of Research
5. Why do/should we conduct research?

Research: Search or find out the truth

Re : Again

Search: Find/explore

Process : Step by step Phases

Search or find out the truth

The process or means by which we can achieve these ends may be classified into three broad categories (Mouly, 1978):

1. Experience
2. Reasoning and 
3. Research

Experience

Experience is a familiar and well known source of knowledge. By personal experience people can find the answers of many of the questions they face in every day life. If people were not able to profit from experience progress would be severely retarded. Ability to learn from experience is a prime characteristics of intellectual behavior. 

The limitations of personal experience in the form of common-sense knowing can quickly exposed. In contrast, in scientific /systematic inquiry, researchers/scientists construct their theories carefully and systematically. 

Reasoning

1. Deductive reasoning 
2. Inductive reasoning
3. Combined inductive-deductive reasoning

Deductive reasoning 

Aristotle and his followers introduced the use of deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is a thinking process in which one can proceed from general to specific statements using prescribed rules of logic. People go from general knowledge to specific knowledge through logical arguments. 

Inductive reasoning 

Introduced by Bacon. Inductive reasoning is a thinking process in which one can proceed from specific statement to general using through direct observation. 

A number of individual cases would lead to a hypothesis and eventually to a generalization.

Combined inductive-deductive reasoning 

Bacon’s inductive method was eventually followed by the inductive-deductive approach, which combines Aristotelian deduction with Baconian induction.

In Mouly’s (1978) word, it  consisted of : “a back-and-forth movement in which the investigator first operate inductively from observations to hypothesis and then deductively from these hypotheses to their implications, in order to check their validity from the standpoint of compatibility with accepted knowledge. After revision, where necessary, these hypotheses are submitted to further test through the collection of data specifically design to test their validity at the empirical level.

 

Example: Man is mortal

What is research 

• Research is an organized inquiry carried out to provide information for solving problem.
• Research is a systematic way of inquiry to understand the nature of phenomena or to find out new knowledge or information.
• Research is a systematic process of collecting and analyzing information to increase our understanding of the world in general and of the phenomenon under study in particular.
• According to the American sociologist Earl Robert Babbie, “Research is a systematic inquiry to describe, explain, predict, and control the observed phenomenon. 

Research 

According to Best, research is a more systematic activity that is directed towards discovery and the development of an organized body of knowledge. Research may be defined as the systematic and objective analysis and recording of controlled observations that may lead to the development of generalizations, principles, or theories, resulting in prediction and possibly ultimate control of event 

Therefore, research concerns with 

WHAT (i.e. fact and conclusion) and

HOW (scientific and critical components)

Before going to in details of scientific method we need to know about science in brief.

Science 

Science is seen as a way of comprehending the world; as a means of explanation and understanding, of prediction and control. Moreover, science is best described as a method of inquiry that permits investigators to examine the phenomena of interest of them. 

Functions of science 

1. Its problem-seeking, question-asking, hunch-encouraging, hypotheses-producing function.

2 Its testing, checking, certifying function; its trying out and testing of hypotheses; its repetition and checking of experiments; its piling up of facts.

3 Its organizing, theorizing, structuring function; its search for larger and larger generalizations.

4 Its history-collecting, scholarly function.

5 Its technological side; instruments, methods, techniques.

6 Its administrative, executive and organizational side.

7 Its publicizing and educational functions.

8 Its applications to human use.

9 Its appreciation, enjoyment, celebration and glorification.

Scientific inquiry/ method 

• Identification of the problem 
• Statement of the problem 
• Formulation of the hypotheses 
• Prediction of consequences
• Testing hypotheses  

                                                                   - Pirsing

Scientific inquiry/ method 

In details:

Stage 1: Hypotheses, hunches and guesses

Stage 2: Experiment designed; samples taken; variables isolated

Stage 3: Correlations observed; patterns identified

Stage 4: Hypotheses formed to explain regularities

Stage 5: Explanations and predictions tested; falsifiability

Stage 6: Laws developed or disconfirmation (hypothesis rejected)

Stage 7: Generalizations made

Stage 8: New theories. 

                                                                        -Hitchcock and Hughes (1995: 23)

Limitation of the scientific method in the social science 

• Complexity of subject matter 
• Difficult in observation 
• Difficult if replication 
• Interaction of observer and subjects 
• Difficult in control 
• Problems of measurement

Purpose of Research

• Explore
• Describe and 
• Explain

TEN CHARACTERISTICS OF RESEARCH

1 Research attempts to solve a problem.

2 Research involves gathering new data from primary or first-hand sources or using existing data for a new purpose.

3 Research is based upon observable experience or empirical evidence.

4 Research demands accurate observation and description.

5 Research generally employs carefully designed procedures and  rigorous analysis.

6 Research emphasizes the development of generalizations, principles or theories that will help in understanding, prediction and/or control.

7 Research requires expertise—familiarity with the field; competence in methodology; technical skill in collecting and analyzing the data.

8 Research attempts to find an objective, unbiased solution to the problem and takes great pains to validate the procedures employed.

9 l Research is a deliberate and unhurried activity which is directional but often refines the problem or questions as the research progresses.

10 Research is carefully recorded and reported to other persons interested in the problem.

Unit 1:Introduction to Research

Lesson 1.2: Research paradigm

Objective of this Lesson

1. Three concepts of social science.
2. How do we conceive the views?
3. Differences between the views.
4. What is paradigm ?
5. Types of paradigm.

Social science research view  

• The established, traditional view holds that the social sciences are essentially the same as the natural sciences and are therefore concerned with discovering natural and universal laws regulating and determining individual and social behavior. 
•  The interpretive view, however, [while sharing the rigour of the natural sciences and the same concern of traditional social science to describe and explain human behavior], emphasizes how people differ from inanimate natural phenomena and, indeed, from each other. 
•  These contending views – and also their corresponding reflections in educational research – stem in the first instance from different conceptions of social reality and of individual and social behaviour.

What is paradigm? 

•  A “paradigm” is a basic system of ideas and beliefs that are based on ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions (Kuhn, 1970).

A paradigm is a basic belief system and theoretical framework with assumptions about 1) ontology, 2) epistemology and 3) methodology (Rehman & Alharthi, 2016)

The three concepts of social science research

1. Ontology
2. Epistemology and 
3. Methodology

Ontology: 

•  Ontology refers to “the nature of our beliefs about reality” (Richards, 2003, p. 33). 
• “Ontological’ assumptions are concerned with the form and nature of reality or social phenomena being investigated. 
•  According to Guba & Lincoln (1994), if a “real‟ world is assumed, then what can be known about it is, “how things really are” or “how things really work”.

Epistemology:

• Epistemology refers to “the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge and the process by which knowledge is acquired and validated” (Gall, Gall, & Borg, 2003, p. 13). 
• “Epistemological‟ assumptions are concerned with the very basis of knowledge, its nature and forms, and how it can be acquired and communicated to other human beings (Cohen et al., 2000:6).  

Methodology: 

• “Methodological” assumptions concern the techniques the inquirers use to explore their environment, that is, mechanistically (quantitative method) or perceive as initiators of their own actions (qualitative method). 
• Methodology is “an articulated, theoretically informed approach to the production of data” (Ellen, 1984, p. 9). 
• It refers to the study and critical analysis of data production techniques. It is the “strategy, plan of action, process or design” that informs one’s choice of research methods (Crotty, 1998, p. 3). 
• It “is concerned with the discussion of how a particular piece of research should be undertaken” (Grix, 2004, p. 32). 
• It guides the researcher in deciding what type of data is required for a study and which data collection tools will be most appropriate for the purpose of his/her study. 
• It is the methodological question that leads the researcher to ask how the world should be studied. 

Two ways of conceiving the views 

• All these three views have two ways of conceiving social reality 

1. Subjective view 
2. Objective view 

• Investigators adopting subjectivist (or anti-positivist) approach and who view the social world as being of a much softer, personal and humanly created kind will select from a comparable range of recent and emerging techniques – accounts, participant observation and personal constructs etc.
• Investigators adopting an objectivist (or positivist) approach to the social world and who treat it like the world of natural phenomena as being hard, real and external to the individual will choose from a range of traditional options – surveys, experiments, and the like.

Differences 

Types of paradigm? 

Pring (2000) discussed several interrelated philosophical issues-

• “objectivity” versus “subjectivity”, 
• “reality” versus “multiple realities”, 
• “truth” versus “verification” and 
• “knowledge” versus “meaning”. 

The author (ibid) describes two “paradigms‟ for [educational] research: 

• The “scientific” paradigm (Paradigm A) and 
• The “constructivist” paradigm (Paradigm B). 

Paradigm A: “Paradigm A” possesses the following characteristics:

• There is a world which exists independently and which is made up of „objects‟ interacting causally with each other.
• Other observers can check the conclusions through repeated experiments under similar conditions.
• Thus, from many carefully conducted observations and experiments, following critical checking from others, a scientifically based body of knowledge can be built up.

Paradigm B: In contrast, “paradigm B‟ contains the characteristics as follows (Pring, 2000:50):

• Each person lives in a “world of ideas”, and it is through those ideas that the world (physical and social) is constructed.
• Communication with other people, therefore, lies in a „negotiation‟ of their respective worlds of ideas, whereby, often for practical reasons (they need to live and work together), they come to share the same ideas. A consensus is reached. 
• Such notions as “truth”, therefore, need to be eliminated or redefined in terms of “consensus”. There can be no correspondence between our conceptions of reality and that reality itself.
• The distinction between “objective” and “subjective” needs to be redefined, since there can be nothing “objective” in the sense of that which exists independently of the world of ideas which, either privately or in consensus with others, has been constructed.
• Development of our thinking lies in the constant negotiation of meanings between people who share each other’s ideas, create new agreements, that is, new ways of conceiving reality. There is no single reality , rather there are as many realities as there are conceptions of it- multiple realities (Pring, 2000).

Guba & Lincoln (1994 & 1998) clarified the philosophical basis of the social research more broadly and systematically in term of ontology, epistemology and methodology. In their book „Fourth Generation Evaluation’, they distinguished between different generations of research.

All courtesy goes to-

Professor Monira Jahan (PhD)

Director

Institute of Education and Research (IER)

Jagannath Univeristy, Dhaka.