Definition of research
- Asad Khan
- Mar 21, 2019
- 3 min read
Research can be defined in the easiest way as “process of collecting information and date for increasing knowledge”.
Which of the following activities will be counted as “research”?
Studying a book
Internet surfing
Going through articles on the website
Watching people at the restaurant
Commencing an interview
News listening
Studying research journals
Visit a museum
Watching videos on YouTube
Reading dictionary
From the above list, you would say “it depends”. A historian may say reading dictionary or visit a museum is “research” but a scientist would negate all of the above-listed activities by calling them “there is no research in these activities man!” Wikipedia or journal studying could be beneficial for literature review part of the research but these can’t be named as complete research.
A researcher’s intention directs motive of the research along with other things such as purpose and paradigm in which a researcher is working in. When people use the term “research” they simply mean “collection of information” but scientists use the term “research” in a more specific way.
In the scientific context, research means adopting the scientific method from initial phases to its conclusion. In research, the collection of information is specifically called “review”.
A scientific review
Literature review explains the learning process and documentation of existing knowledge about a topic and then add to this knowledge. Researchers recommend that a person must find the loopholes in the existing literature then he must try to build his hypothesis on the basis of this gap. In a more concrete way, a literature review is a scan of already present information and this scanning through documents would reveal hidden information about the topic and presents the places for research.
A literature review can be performed by presenting the rigorous analysis and commenting on the mistakes in the previous research. It is also performed by providing a conclusion of the literature review which depicts the new angle about the given data.
The scientific method starts with scanning the comprehensively available information and then slowly running through the data to refine and make a research question. This research question takes the form of a hypothesis.
The exact definition of the scientific method (scientific research) is all about executing a methodical study to accept or reject the hypothesis and answering the research question. Before coming to this point, a researcher needs to have some understanding of what has known previously and what can be done from here. From this point, a researcher tends to implement experiments to test depending on the nature of the topic and field of the study.
Realistically, the above-mentioned steps are not discrete. Most research, whether scientific, economic or social, need some kind of interpretation and opinion from the researcher at the beginning of the research. In fact, research performs literature review keeping in mind any kind of idea about the hypothesis.
This rough symbol of hypothesis directs the mind of a researcher about what kind of literature he wants to review. In other words, what kind of information he is looking for. A firm idea before conducting the literature review will not cause any problem as long as the researcher does not show biases and he is ready to include that information as well which does not support his hypothesis.
It has been noticed that many students waste hours on research projects which they should not have started in first place. A student can search through places about a project if it has been done or not. It happens that students think they are going to adopt a new approach for commencing research but later on, they find that the research has also been conducted previously this way. Therefore, it is imperative to start the research process with an open mind so that student could not become bias and does not exclude information which disapproves his hypothesis.
The scientific definition of research tells that a variable can be manipulated in an experiment. On another hand, qualitative research depends on case studies and observational data. Therefore, qualitative research has its own merits and demerits.
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