TECHNICAL TERMS USED IN RESEARCH

• Research


  An art of scientific investigation, a careful and detailed study into a specific problem, concern, or issue using the scientific method, regarded as a systematic effort to gain new knowledge, a careful investigation or inquiry especially through search for new facts in any branch of knowledge (dictionary meaning)
• Research


  • Organized and systematic way of finding answers to questions, systematic because there is a definite set of procedures and steps which you will follow, organized in that there is a structure or method in going about doing research, it is a planned procedure, not a spontaneous one, it is focused and limited to a specific scope, finding answers is the end of all research, questions are central to research
• Research paper


  A piece of academic writing that provides analysis, interpretation, and argument based on in-depth independent research
• Abstract


  A short summary of your completed research, intended to describe your work without going into detail, should be self-contained and concise, explaining your work as briefly and clearly as possible
• Introduction


  The next part after the title and abstract, it leads the reader from a general subject area to a particular topic of inquiry, it establishes the scope, context, and significance of the research being conducted by summarizing current understanding and background information about the topic, stating the purpose of the work in the form of the research problem supported by a hypothesis or a set of questions, explaining briefly the methodological approach used to examine the research problem, highlighting the potential outcomes your study can reveal, outlining the remaining structure and organization of the paper
• Literature review


  Provides an overview of sources you have explored including books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study, provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research
• Hypothesis


  A statement of expectation or prediction that will be tested by research, commonly known as the researcher's intellectual guess or wild guess about the possible result of the study
• Methodology


  The systematic method to resolve a research problem through data gathering using various techniques, providing an interpretation of data gathered, and drawing conclusions about the research data, aims to ensure valid and reliable results that address the research aims and objectives, where the researcher will decide what data to collect, who to collect it from, how to collect it, and how to analyze it
• Population


  The entire group that you want to draw conclusions about, in research it doesn't always refer to people, it can mean a group containing elements of anything you want to study, such as objects, events, organizations, countries, species, organisms, etc.
• Sample


  A smaller part or subgroup of the population, the specific group within a population that you will collect data from, the group of individuals who will participate in your study, they are the ones who will answer surveys or interviews
• Reasons for sampling


  • Necessity, sometimes it's simply not possible to study the whole population due to its size or inaccessibility
  • Practicality, it's easier and more efficient to collect data from a sample
  • Cost-effectiveness, there are fewer participants, laboratory equipment, and researcher costs involved
  • Manageability, storing and running statistical analyses on smaller datasets is easier and reliable
• Respondents, participants, subjects


  Answer (respond/reply to) questionnaires usually in quantitative research, participate and answer questions in qualitative studies (e.g. interviews and focus groups), generally gives much more detailed answers than a respondent would in a survey, the people in the researcher's experiment, usually in quantitative research
• Variable


  Any factor, trait, or condition that can be manipulated, controlled for, or measured in an experiment, independent variable is the variable that is changed or manipulated, assumed to have a direct effect on the dependent variable, dependent variable is the variable being tested and measured, 'dependent' on the independent variable
• Research instrument


  Any tool that you may use to collect or obtain data, measure data, and analyze data that is relevant to the subject of your research, the format may consist of questionnaires, surveys, interviews, checklists, simple tests, a good research instrument is one that has been validated and has proven reliability, it should be able to assist in answering the research aims, objectives and research questions, as well as prove or disprove the hypothesis of the study, it should not have any bias and should be clear as to how it should be used appropriately
• Questionnaire


  The main instrument for collecting data in survey research, basically, it is a set of standardized questions, often called items, which follow a fixed scheme in order to collect individual data about one or more specific topics
• Data


  Any information that has been collected, observed, generated, or created to validate original research findings
• Results (Findings)


  The section of a research paper where the authors provide the data collected during their study
• Discussion

  The section of a research paper whose purpose is to interpret and describe the significance of your findings in light of what was already known about the research problem being investigated, and to explain any new understanding or insights that emerged as a result of your study of the problem, the objectives are to reiterate the research problem/state the major findings, explain the meaning of the findings and why they are important, relate the findings to similar studies, consider alternative explanations of the findings, acknowledge the study's limitations, and make suggestions for further research
• Conclusion


  Intended to help the readers understand why your research should matter to them after they have finished reading the paper, not merely a summary of your points or a re-statement of your research problem but a synthesis of key points, the key goals are to restate the research problem addressed in the paper, summarize your overall arguments or findings, and suggest the key takeaways from your paper
• Reference


  The last page of a research paper that lists all the sources you used in your study, it gives credit to authors you have consulted for their ideas
• Appendix


  Serves as a space for materials that help clarify your research, but do not belong in the main text, this is where the researchers attach a copy of their research instrument such as interview transcripts, questionnaires, or surveys