When doing research studies, setting specific research scope with a particular research problem to be solved are two determinants for the success of the research investigation (Creswell, 2013)). Thus, research projects usually follow specific producers such as topic identification, literature review, research methodology selection, and data analysis. When there are no step by step producers to follow, researchers are likely to face several difficulties.
Firstly, if there is no particular producers to follow, researchers may face the problem of unclear research problem. For example, if a researcher does not decide what research problem he is going to solve and directly moves into data collection with a survey, then inappropriate questions may be asked which can lead to irrelevant research findings. When the researcher goes back to the stage of topic identification based on the dataset he has, he may find that data are too broad to solve a specific research problem.
Secondly, according to Tonkiss (2004), research studies are usually data-led, which means that researchers collect and analyse data so meaningful findings can be carried out to solve research problems. However, with no procedure to follow, researchers face the problem that they have no idea about what data to be collected, where to gather data, and how to develop meaningful findings from the data. All these will lead to the failure of the research.
Thirdly, when there is no procedures to follow, inaccurate data analysis may be developed. For example, a study that aims to explore the trend of starting a business among university students after they finish study. Then, logical procedures would help researchers identify what types of findings they need, which may include percentages of students that have intention to create a new business. However, without a step-by-step procedure, researchers may use inappropriate approaches to analyse datasets, thereby leading to inaccurate research findings.
From above discussions, it can be seen that systematic analysis is very important in research studies. It allows researchers to understand the research objectives, identify what research method they need to follow, what samples they need to target, as well as how they can use right techniques to develop useful findings. Given the importance of research procedure and systematic analysis, it must be understood that with different research purposes, researchers may follow different research procedures and apply different techniques to analyse data. Thus, it can be seen that every research is unique and there is no best research methodology that can be applied in all research studies.
References
Creswell, J.W., (2013) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, SAGE Publications.
Tonkiss, F. (2004) Analyzing discourse. Researching Society and Culture. Sage, London, UK
By Huijie Wang
MCS923 Group 5 