WHAT IS A RESEARCH

1. A systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts
and reach new conclusions.
2. Research is a careful and detailed study into a specific problem, concern, or issue using the
scientific method.

PURPOSE OF RESEARCH

1. To increase knowledge use of this knowledge to devise new applications."

2. It is used to establish or confirm facts, reaffirm the results of previous work, solve new or
existing problems, support theorems, or develop new theories.
3. It may also be an expansion on past work in the field.
4. Providing facts that will help us to analyse the problem;
5. Testing the feasibility and the impact of programmes; and
6. Finding better solutions to the challenges.

TYPES OF RESEARCH

1. Basic Research:
a. The research is interested in formulating and testing theoretical construct and
propositions that ideally generalize across time and space.
b. This research is more descriptive in nature exploring what, why and how questions.
2. Applied Research:
a. Applied research is carried out to find answers to practical problems to be solved
b. As an aid in decision making in different areas including product design, process
design and policy making.
c. In other words, this type of research pursues potential solutions to human and societal
problems.
d. This research is more prescriptive in nature, focusing on how questions.
3. Evaluation Research (summative and formative):
a. Evaluation research studies the processes and outcomes aimed at attempted solution.
b. The purpose of formative research is to improve human intervention within specific
conditions, such as activities, time, and groups of people;
c. the purpose of summative evaluation is to judge the effectiveness of a program,
policy, or product.
4. Action Research:
a. Action research aims at solving specific problems within a program, organization, or
community.
b. Patton (1990) described that design and data collection in action research tend to be
more informal, and the people in the situation are directly involved in gathering
information and studying themselves.
5. Empirical research - It which tests the feasibility of a solution using empirical evidence.
There are two major types of empirical research design: qualitative research and quantitative
research. Researchers choose qualitative or quantitative methods according to the nature of
the research topic they want to investigate and the research questions they aim to answer:

a. Qualitative research
i. This involves understanding human behavior and reasons that govern such
behavior, by asking a broad question, collecting data in the form of words,
images, video etc that is analyzed, and searching for themes.
ii. This type of research aims to investigate a question without attempting to
quantifiably measure variables or look to potential relationships between
variables.
iii. Social media posts are used for qualitative research.
b. Quantitative research
i. This involves systematic empirical investigation of quantitative properties and
phenomena and their relationships, by asking a narrow question and collecting
numerical data to analyze it utilizing statistical methods.
ii. The quantitative research designs are experimental, correlational, and survey
(or descriptive).
iii. Statistics derived from quantitative research can be used to establish the
existence of associative or causal relationships between variables.
iv. Quantitative research is linked with the philosophical and theoretical stance of
positivism.
6. Non-empirical research
a. Non-empirical (theoretical) research is an approach that involves the development of
theory as opposed to using observation and experimentation.
b. It seeks solutions to problems using existing knowledge as its source.
c. This, however, does not mean that new ideas and innovations cannot be found within
the pool of existing and established knowledge.
d. Non-empirical research is not an absolute alternative to empirical research because
they may be used together to strengthen a research approach.
e. Neither one is less effective than the other since they have their particular purpose in
science.
f. Typically empirical research produces observations that need to be explained; then
theoretical research tries to explain them, and in so doing generates empirically
testable hypotheses; these hypotheses are then tested empirically, giving more
observations that may need further explanation; and so on.
g. A simple example of a non-empirical task is the prototyping of a new drug using a
differentiated application of existing knowledge;
TESTS IN RESEARCH

1. Hypothesis Testing – statistics and sampling

An example of a lecturer's dilemma
Two statistics lecturers, Sarah and Mike, think that they use the best method to teach their
students. Each lecturer has 50 statistics students who are studying a graduate degree in
management. In Sarah's class, students have to attend one lecture and one seminar class
every week, whilst in Mike's class students only have to attend one lecture. Sarah thinks that
seminars, in addition to lectures, are an important teaching method in statistics, whilst Mike
believes that lectures are sufficient by themselves and thinks that students are better off
solving problems by themselves in their own time. This is the first year that Sarah has given
seminars, but since they take up a lot of her time, she wants to make sure that she is not
wasting her time and that seminars improve her students' performance.
2. Correlational - These tests look for an association between variables
3. Pearson correlation - Tests for the strength of the association between two continuous
variables
4. Spearman correlation - Tests for the strength of the association between two ordinal variables
(does not rely on the assumption of normally distributed data)
5. Chi-square - Tests for the strength of the association between two categorical variables
6. Regression: assess if change in one variable predicts change in another variable