The Research Process
First Phase of Research: Exploration
Step 2: conduct a literature review of the domain of interest. The purpose: to survey the current state of knowledge in the area of inquiry; to identify key authors, articles, theories, and findings in that area; and to identify gaps in knowledge in that research area.
Step 3: identify one or more theories can help address the desired research questions.
Second Phase of Research: Research Design
Third Phase of Research: Research Execution
Operationalization is the process of designing precise measures for abstract theoretical constructs.
The researcher must also decide what research method they wish to employ for collecting data to address their research questions of interest (quantitative, qualitative, or combination of both).
Choose target population fro which to collect data, and a sampling strategy to select a sample from that population
Pilot testing helps detect potential problems in your research design and/or instrumentation and to ensure that the measurement instruments used in the study are reliable and valid measures of the constructs of interest.
Data collection (quantitative or qualitative)
Data Analysis (quantitative or qualitative)
Research report documents the entire research process and its findings in the for of a research paper, dissertation, or monograph.
Common mistakes in research
Insufficiently motivated research question: choosing problems that are interesting to us but not to the scientific community at large
Pursuing research fads: " popular" topics with limited shelf life
Unresearchable problems: may not be answered adequately based on observed evidence alone, or using currently accepted methods and procedures.
Favored research methods: recasting a research problem so that it is amenable to favorite research method (e.g.survey research).
Blind data mining: tendency to collect data first using instruments that are already available and then figure out what to do with it.
Step 1: identify one or more research questions dealing with a specific behavior, event, or phenomena of interest
Research proposal: details all of the decisions made in the preceding stages of the research process and the rationale behind each decision.