Research Methodology research process

Research Process:

• Research is an extremely cyclic process.
• Later stages might necessitate a review of earlier work. 
• This isn't a weakness of the process but is part of the built-in error correction machinery. 
• Because of the cyclic nature of research, it can be difficult to determine where to start and when to stop.

Step 1: A question is raised

• A question occurs to or is posed to the researcher for which that researcher has no answer.
• This doesn't mean that someone else doesn't already have an answer.
• The question needs to be converted to an appropriate problem statement like that documented in a research proposal.

Step 2: Suggest hypotheses

• The researcher generates intermediate hypotheses to describe a solution to the problem.
• This is at best a temporary solution since there is as yet no evidence to support either the acceptance or rejection of these hypotheses.

Step 3: Literature Review

• The available literature is reviewed to determine if there is already a solution to the problem.
• Existing solutions do not always explain new observations.
• The existing solution might require some revision or even be discarded.

Step 4: Literature evaluation

• It’s possible that the literature review has yielded a solution to the proposed problem.
• This means that you haven’t really done research.
• On the other hand, if the literature review turns up nothing, then additional research activities are justified.

Step 5: Acquire Data

• The researcher now begins to gather data relating to the research problem.
• The means of data acquisition will often change based on the type of the research problem.
• This might entail only data gathering, but it could also require the creation of new measurement instruments.

Step 6: Data analysis

• The data that were gathered in the previous step are analyzed as a first step in ascertaining their meaning.
• As before, the analysis of the data does not constitute research.
• This is basic number crunching.

Step 7: Data interpretation

• The researcher interprets the newly analyzed data and suggests a conclusion.
• This can be difficult.
• Keep in mind that data analysis that suggests a correlation between two variables can’t automatically be interpreted as suggesting causality between those variables.

Step 8: Hypothesis Support

• The data will either support the hypotheses or they won’t.
• This may lead the researcher to cycle back to an earlier step in the process and begin again with a new hypothesis.
• This is one of the self self-correcting mechanisms associated with the scientific method.