Module 1

Introduction to Scientific Research

Quadrant 1
1. Introduction

Research is a systematic process of inquiry that involves the collection and interpretation of data pertaining to a topic, to discover new
facts and/ or opinions. It is a scientific process to the extent it adopts the procedures of natural science in conducting the inquiry and also
strictly adheres to its standards of logical validation of findings .It is also a skill to be mastered by scholars engaged in post graduate
studies and beyond. Hence, this module provides an introduction to scientific research and explains the stages of conducting a scientific
research inquiry. The skills needed to conduct research are also discussed in this module.

At the end of this module, the student will,

· understand the concept of scientific research
· learn the stages of scientific research and
· develop aptitude and appreciation for scientific research.

2. The Concept of Scientific Research

2.1. Definitions of research

The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives three definitions of research. At its simplest, research is a careful or diligent search.
Alternatively, research can be seen as the collecting of information about a particular subject. A third and more
comprehensive definition of research is:
A studious inquiry or examination; especially investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and
interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of
such new or revised theories or laws.
The last definition can be considered as appropriate for scientific research since it states that research is a well thought out,
planned search or study that involves the following:

a) the collection of first-hand information (also known as primary data) about a topic from the subjects or
respondents of study, which could be factual or/and their perceptions of facts relevant to the study.
b) the analysis and interpretation of collected information and

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 c) comparison of the newly interpreted information with what is already known about the topic of study. It is needed
for one of the following:
a. to support known information
b. to challenge known information
c. to provide new insights into what is known.

This means a scientific research can be conducted on any topic as long as the following conditions are fulfilled:
1. The entire process is well planned and the person carrying out the research (the researcher) knows what s/he is
doing.
2. First-hand information or primary data is collected.
3. The collected information is scientifically analysed and interpreted.
4. There is a comparison of this newly interpreted information with already available information

Let us look at a few examples to understand this.

2.2. Example 1

You want to find out what students social workers who are currently doing their MSW feel about their field work
placements, so that suitable changes and modifications can be made to make them feel better. Would this need a research
study? To check that out, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Can this be a well thought out and planned research project? Yes, it definitely can.
2. Does it involve collection of first-hand information – You will ask student social workers questions about their field
work and will collect information on their views/ opinions about or perceptions towards their field work
placements. So, yes, it does involve collection of first hand information or data.
3. Are you going to analyse and interpret the collected information? – You will have to look at what student social
workers from different backgrounds feel about their field work placements. More particularly, analyse their views
and perceptions in relation to their differing personal, social, economic and academic characteristics to see whether
there is any significant influence of their backgrounds on their views and perceptions. For instance, you may
compare what girls say about their field work placements with what boys say, what students from one college say
with what students from another college say. You may also examine if there is any difference in the experiences
related to the rural field placements and the urban ones. By analysing such varied or/and different aspects of the
collected information, you are systematically arranging the data for interpretation. Interpretation of data is done in

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 the form of logical statements relevant to the data evident after analysis and classification. So, yes, analysis and
interpretation are also going to take place.
4. Will you compare the newly interpreted information to what is already known? If research studies have already
been conducted on student views of field work practice, you will compare the new findings or results to those
already in existence to see if what you have found supports, challenges or provides new insights into existing facts.
If there is no information on student perceptions towards field work, then your research study will provide much
needed information on the same. So, once again, yes, comparison can take place, leading to extension of
information about the topic

Since all four questions are answered in the affirmative, we can say that the inquiry into students perception towards their
field work placements can be a research project which can preferably be titled“ A study of Student Social Workers’
Perception towards their Field Placements”.

2.3. Example 2

You want to understand the concept of childhood and its evolution through the years. Now would this be a research study?
Let us once again ask the above four questions:
1. Can this be a well thought out and planned project? Yes, it definitely can.
2. Does it involve collection of first-hand information? You can get information on the concept of childhood and its
evolution from books, journals and websites. You will find it hard to get this from people. Thus, we can say that this
project does not involve collection of first hand data.
3. Are you going to analyse and interpret the collected information? You will examine and compare ideas of childhood
expressed by different authors over the years in order to understand its evolution. So yes, you will be analysing and
interpreting the collected information.
4. Will you compare the newly interpreted information to what is already known? There is no new information that is
being collected as you have collected only information already available. Hence, this is not applicable.
Here, we answer two questions in the affirmative and the remaining two in negative. Hence, this project which we can
title as “Understanding the Concept of Childhood and its Evolution thought the Years” does not qualify to be a
scientific research project.

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3. The Different Steps in a Scientific Research

There are usually nine steps involved when carrying out a scientific research. These are listed below and discussed in brief
in the sub sections that follow:

1. Problem identification /clearly narrowing the focus of research

2. Review of available literature on the subject selected for the study
3. Problem formulation- stating research questions and objectives of the study/formulating relevant hypotheses
4. Writing a research proposal
5. Deciding the methodology or the drawing of research design
6. Selection of study population or samples and preparation of tools of data collection
7. Collecting the data from the respondents
8. Analysing and interpreting the data, and
9. Writing the research report.

3.1. Problem identification /narrowing the focus of research

The three things you need to keep in mind when selecting the topic of research are:

© Your interest areas: your topic should be one that interests you. You should want to know more about the topic that you
are going to research upon. For example, if you feel very strongly about child rights, you should research on that and
not on something else.

© It should be an original topic. Look at aspects of the topic that interests you and that have not yet been researched much
or at all. Continuing with the child rights topic, rights of child labourers and street children have been the focus of many
studies. You may want to look at the rights of children with special needs or children living with terminal illnesses.

© The resources available to you: Resources refer to time, the financial support and the human power that you have at
your disposal. The scope of your research will depend on all three. If you have unlimited time, money and human
power; your research could cover children with special needs across the country. On the other hand, limited resources
would mean limiting the scope of your study to a specific city (or even a part of a city).

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The next step is to refine the area of research that you have selected and state it in the form of a research question. We
continue with the above example. Let us take the rights of children with special needs as the area of your research. Now,
you need to decide the focus of your research. To do this, you would have to go through the available literature on the topic
in the forms of research reports, journal articles, materials from the text books and other sources of references and website
based of information. It will help you to narrow down the topic to a specific aspect or a few related aspects. Ideally, the
topic you focus on should be one:
© That interests you (this is really important and cannot be stressed enough!)
© On which information is available (if there is very little information available on a topic, it becomes difficult to research
on it)
© That is feasible in terms of easy availability of primary source of data or the respondents,
© That does not raise serious ethical questions both in the subject matter focused as well as the type of respondents
envisaged,

© That has one or more aspects which have not been researched upon too much (so that you can demonstrate originality)

Having undertaken a detailed literature scan on children with special needs, let us say you have narrowed the topic down
to” the parent’s perception of the educational rights of children with special needs in Mumbai”. This then is the focus of
your research.

3.2. Literature Review

During the literature review, you will examine scholarly articles from journals, research reports , dissertations, published
government and other records, materials from magazines and other periodicals, conference/ seminar papers published,
books and audio-visual materials that provide information on the specific area focused for the study. At the end of the
review, you will provide an analytical summary of the materials scanned on the specific topic of the proposed research,
there by bringing together the contributions of different authors/researchers to serve as a foundation for your research. In
short, your review will also be an overview of available literature on the topic. Your review may identify the existing
information gap on the topic and that will justify the rationale for your present study. In other words, you may focus on that
aspect about which the current level of information is inadequate.

There are three things that you need to do as part of a literature review:
1. Read as much as you can
2. Critically analyse what you read
3. Write your analysis.

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When you read, you must remember to note the page numbers that you are referring to as well as the detailed bibliography
of the source of information. This is important even when you do not plan to quote the source verbatim. Even ideas and
concepts need to be annotated. Just noting down the names of the authors and year of publication is not sufficient. Often,
the same authors may have published more than one work in that year. It is an extremely difficult exercise to trace the
source at a later stage and it involves a great deal of time. (Cross link with Storyboard animation in 2 nd Quadrant)

3.3. Problem formulation or framing a research question, research objectives, and/or hypothesis

To frame your focus into a research question and specific research objectives and/or hypothesis, you need to clearly
identify:
© The geographical location for your study
© The time period being considered for examining in your research, namely whether the study refers to the past, present
or perception of a future event, and the number of years that you will be examining about if it is past or future.
© The specific sub- areas of the topic selected about which you will require information from the respondents of the study
© The demographic aspects of the population from which you will select the respondents, such as their demographic,
social and economic background ( For example, their age , gender, state of literacy, type of family, place of original
domicile, caste, religion, type of occupation, income status and so on)

One example each of research question, research objective and hypothesis is given below:
:
· Research question: To what extent does the financial status of the parents affect the educational rights of children
with special needs in suburban Mumbai?
· Research objective: To study the parent’s socio-economic background to ascertain whether ensuring the
educational rights of their children with special needs is influenced by it to any extent.
· Research hypothesis: Higher the financial status of parents, better the educational opportunities provided to their
children with special needs in Mumbai
.

3.4. Deciding the methodology or drawing research design

There are two aspects to developing the methodology:

a. Deciding the orientation of the research: this means deciding whether the research needs a qualitative or a
quantitative methodology or even a mix of both these methods. This decision would be largely based on the focus

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 of your research and the research questions and study objectives/ hypotheses. It is necessary to remember that you
would have to read extensively to determine the methodology most suited for your study as also the theory that
underpins the methodology. More information on qualitative and quantitative research is given in Module 2.
b. Deciding the appropriate sampling design and tools for data collection. More information on the tools of data
collection is given in Modules 12 and 25.

3.5. Writing a research proposal

A research proposal is needed to:

© Clarify, in the researcher’s mind, the key elements involved in the research process such as the problem
narrowly focused ,the rationale for the present study, the research questions, objectives, hypothesis, the key
concepts involved and their operational definitions and, the research design
© Develop the initial ‘work-plan’ to conduct the study
© Assess the kind of resources, including time, that will be required to complete the study
© Provide sufficient information for the readers (professors, commissioning agency etc.) to evaluate the proposed
study.
© Get formal sanction to carry out a research
© Get funding for the research / Obtain other resources like access to the computer, time allocation for the
research, reference books and support from the concerned authorities

3.6. Sample design and the Data collection

Sampling design refers to the process of selecting appropriate number of respondents from the target population for the
study. It includes determining the sample size or the number of cases to be studied, choosing the particular sampling
technique, and estimating the possible sampling errors.
The data collection requires the preparation of relevant tool/s to be administered to the respondents. Depending on the
nature of study design and the characteristics of the sample chosen, the tool/s can vary. Generally for collecting self
reported data from the respondents, one can use the personal interview method and/or questionnaire method. Field
observation by the researcher or appointed investigators can be useful in studies involving processes, manifest behaviours
and so on. For interview, tools such as interview schedule and guides are used. Once the tool is finalised, it is pre tested or
pilot tested on a similar sample for checking its appropriateness and clarity of contents, including the language used to
frame question. Based on the results of the pre test, the tool will be suitably revised and modified. Now it is ready for
administering to the actual respondents. The process of data collection may usually consume a sizeable amount of

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time. The data collection can take place in the field (real world) or in a laboratory (with artificially created conditions)
depending on the requirements of the research study. In all the earlier mentioned examples, the data collection will have to
take place in the field or in the real world.

3.7. Data analysis and Interpretation

The process of giving meaning to the collected information is called analysis. In order to do it, the raw data has to be
processed by entering into the computer using an appropriate package. Once the data entry is done along with data
cleansing, the analysis can take place as per a pre determined plan of analysis. The analysis in a quantitative study can be
done with the help of statistics, whereas in a qualitative study it can be done descriptively. In the examples mentioned
earlier, the methodology can be either quantitative or mixed. Hence it can analyse the data both statistically as well as
descriptively.
The statistical analysis of data will require the use of numbers, frequency tables and relevant statistical techniques,
including tests of significance, correlation, variance and so on.Similarly,graphs and charts can also be used to present the
quantitative data analysed.

In the case of earlier mentioned example involving student social workers, the analysis can be done by deriving the
frequencies of characteristics from the data collected and their corresponding percentages, as illustrated here:
Nearly 58 percent of the student social workers stated that they were able to work in field settings of their choice. Analysis
may include comparisons across genders (male students versus female students)- for example more female students (66%)
preferred schools settings than male students (33%) or other categories (rural and urban field settings, location of the
colleges of social work- suburban versus city colleges and age of students, just to name a few). Analysis may also be
descriptive where you use the words of the respondents; you quote them directly to add authenticity to the data:
“I really wanted to work with women prisoners. But my placement was with an organisation that worked on
advocacy issues. I was really disappointed but who listens to what we want” (IInd year MSW female student
from a suburban college)
.

3.8. Writing the research report

The final step in completing a research is writing the research report. A quantitative research document will differ from a
qualitative research report in many ways. Modules 34 and 35 provide details on how to write a quantitative and a
qualitative document respectively.

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4. Skills required for researching

In order to conduct a research study successfully, a researcher has to be adequately skilful in:

© Carefully planning and executing the project independently

© Scientific writing, including the use of APA style referencing
© Analytical and critical thinking
© Logical and systematic organisation and presentation of data
© Time keeping or sticking to deadlines and completing the project on time.

Each of these is discussed in the subsections that follow.

4.1. Carefully planning and executing the project independently

As a researcher, you will mostly work independently. Hence, the capacity to be able to plan things independently is
preferable. However, there are always ways and means also to link with others and work collaboratively, if you are better
equipped to work in a group than working individually.

4.2. Writing skills

Research requires you to do a lot of writing. If you have good writing skills, this becomes easier. Research language has to
be scientific. Hence it should avoid mentioning first and second persons in writing, should authenticate information given
by providing correct source reference details and use standard terms and expressions. You should avoid spoken
expressions. So is the need to master the APA style of referencing. Of course, practice makes it perfect. It is also possible to
get help in all these, as there are professionals skilled in them and available to help those in need.
Analytical and critical thinking skills
As a researcher, you have to critically analyse the contents of the literature reviewed. That will help you to be pragmatic
and non- dogmatic about the subject. That will also enable you to approach the subject freely, without prejudice and pre
conceived notions. It should also reflect in your data interpretations and subsequent discussion of findings.

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 4.3. Presentation and organisational skills

Conducting a research is not sufficient by itself. It has to be made available for reference to the interested public, fellow
professionals, and scrutiny by competent examiners and critique by experts, experienced researchers and practioners.
Hence, it is very important to systematically and logically organize and present the study in a well augmented report. This
can also ensure that your research project does not remain in locked cupboards in libraries, but is being used as valuable
source of reference for field practice.

4.4. Ability to stick to deadlines and complete projects on time

Most research projects come with some kind of deadline- whether it is a dissertation as part of your MSW or a research
project being conducted by you for your employer. If it is your own research project as part of a degree course, you are the
one responsible for ensuring that you complete it on time. Your guide or supervisor will help you stay on track, but the
responsibility to make sure that you meet deadlines and submit your research project on time is yours. In a collaborative
project that involves others, either from the organisation you work for or from other organisations, the responsibility for
ensuring the timely completion of the project may rest formally with a research co coordinator or director. In any case, the
ability to stick to deadlines and work under pressure will hold you in good stead for any research project.

As a researcher, it is essential that you not only know where your strengths lie, but also understand your weaknesses. Please
remember that these are all skills and skills are not always inborn, but possible to be developed through careful practice..
You can always learn the skills if you have the motivation. Please attempt the Assessing My Research Skills section to
know your researching strengths and weaknesses (Cross link with Interactive Simulation in 2nd Quadrant).

5. Summary

5.1. In this introductory module quadrant 1, a brief overview of Scientific Research is presented. It covered the subjects
ranging from the concept of scientific research, the research process to the skills required to do research project. In
subsequent modules these will be fully developed to enable the student to plan and carry out scientific research.

5.2. In quadrant 2 you can see an example of the whole scene enacted in animation, so that the student can understand this
module better and in the end there is an interactive form for self-evaluation of the student’s aptitude for research. Do try it
out again at the end of the course as you may have developed further skills.

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5.3. In quadrant 3 a glossary of important words and web link is given. You are encouraged to expand on this.

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