The Role and Importance of Research

1. The Role and Importance of Research Dr Mas Anom Abdul Rashid 012-7763624

2. How to Conduct a Research • Develop an understanding of the research process • Prepare yourself to conduct research of your own. • Learn how to judge the quality of research. • Learn how to read, search through, and summarize other research. • Learn the value of research activities conducted online. • Reveal the mysteries of basic statistics and show you how easily they can be used. • Measure the behaviors, traits or attributes that interest you.

3. Cont…. • Collect eh type of data that relate to your area of interest. • Use a leading statistical package (SPSS) to analyze data. • Design research studies that answer the question that you want answered. • Write the type of research proposal (and a research report) that puts you in control – one that shows you have command of the content of the research as well as the way in which the research should be done! • So you should be terrified?! Excited? • If you find it boring – then, research is not for you!

4. What Research is and What it isn’t? • Research is (among other things) an intensive activity that is based on the work of others and generates new ideas to pursue and questions to answer. • Eg of great researcher: • Mavis Hetherington (Uni of Virginia) who won a Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award for her work of over 50 year period on how parental marital transitions have an impact on the development of children and adolescents. • Richard M. Shiffrin (Indiana Uni) won a similar award for his research in cognitive psychology and the development of theories about cognition. • Thomas J. cotes (Uni of California LA) won an award for his work in HIV prevention research in South Africa, Peru and China (in Public Policy) What these researcher have in common? - At one time, they participate actively in doing research.

5. Cont… RESEARCH – is a process through which new knowledge is discovered. A theory - helps us to organize this new information into a coherent body, a set of related ideas that explain events that have occurred and predict events that may happen. (theory is the ground-floor level of a research.) A researcher must work to get the ball rolling, adding a bit of new insight here and add new speculation there, until these factors come together to form a corpus of knowledge.

6. Cont.. • A high quality research is characterized by many different attributions, many of which tend to be inter-related (related to one another) and tend to overlap. • A HIGH QUALITY RESEARCH: • Is based on the work of others, (but not pliagiate) (look at the work that has already been done to provide a basis for the subject of your research, e.g. its methodology, and take the results into consideration when you plan your research) • Can be replicated, (one of the hallmarks of credible scientific findings can be replicated). If the result of of an experiment can be replicated, they can serve as a basis for further research in the same area, e.g. spin gold from straw, new method to teach children to read?. • Is generalizable to other settings, (e.g. if boys are found to be particularly susceptible to peer pressure in one setting, then, the results would probably stand up (or be generablizable) in a different but related setting). Some research has limited generablizability because it is difficult to replicated the exact conditions under which the research was carried out, but the results of most research can lend at least something to another setting.) • Is based on some logical rationale and tied to theory, (research ideas DO NOT stand alone merely as interesting questions, instead, provides answers to questions that help fill in pieces to what can be a large and complicated puzzle. No one can understand one grand research process – it should be broken into smaller elements, and all these elements need to be tied together will a common theme – based on some underlying, guiding theory). • Is doable, ( The problem statement shows whether a research is doable or not. Problem statement should be consice and precise. Ambigous problem statement and lack of conceptual framework makes problem statement almost useless and definitely NOT doable). • Generates new questions or is cyclical in nature, (what goes around comes around. The research questions asked today, will guide research questions that will be asked tomorrow). • Is incremental, (no one scientist stands alone – scientist stands on the shoulders of others. Each contributions takes place in small, easily definable chunks). • Is an apolitical activity that should be undertaken for the betterment of society.(bottom line – it is how the discovery of new knowledge is used that results in its misuse, not the new knowledge itself. A research should have an ultimate goal for the betterment of the society).

7. If these attributes make for good research, what is bad research? • Bad research takes the opposite approach!

8. Steps in Research Process “Doing science” means following a model that begins with a question and ends with asking new questions. The goal of this model is to find the truth or, in other words, to use a SCIENTIFIC METHOD that results in a reasonable and sound answer to important questions that will further our understanding of human behavior.

9. The steps in a research process: STEP 1: Asking the Question • Ask a question: e.g “I wonder what would happen if ..?” or • Identify a need: e.g. “We have to find a way to ….. ) • Ask question that arises as the result of curiosity, and to which it becomes necessary to find an answer. • E.g. “I wonder how watching television affects the development of children’s language skills”. Questions are informally stated and often are intended as a source of discussion and stimulation about what direction the specific research topic should take. Questions spring from our sense of imagination and our own experiences, enriched by the worlds of science, art, music and literature. Creative scientist always think about everything from solutions to existing questions to the next important question to ask.

10. “Take advantage of all the experiences you can, both in and out of school.” Only then can you be well prepapared to recognize the importance of certain events, which will act as a stimulus for more rigorous research activity”. Louis Pasteur Questions can be as broad as inquiring about the effects of television on language development, or as specific as the relationship between the content of certain television commercials and teenagers’ buying habits. Whatever their content or depth of inquiry, questions are the first step in any scientific endeavour.

11. Step 2: Indentifying the important factors • Identify the factors that have to be examined to answer the question. • Eg. Age of a child • Degree of violence portrayed in tv programs • Stage of child’s cognitive growth • Producer’s attitude • Facial expression • Decision making • Mother’s description of viewing patterns • Emotional arousal • Ethnic differences in response to television programs • Family communication patterns • In general, select factors that: • Have not been investigated before • Will contribute to the understanding of the question you are asking • Are available to investigate • Hold some interest for you personally or professionally • Lead to another question It is hard enough to define the nature of the problem let alone generate questions that lead to more questions, but once you begin the journey , you have the responsibility to contribute to new knowledge (scientific literature)

12. Step 3; Formulating a hypothesis • A hypothesis results – when the questions are transformed into statements that express the relationships between variables like an “if…then” statement. e.g. Boys who view aggressive acts during prime-time cartoon shows are more likely to exhibit aggressive behaviors right after the television viewing session than are boys who watch non aggressive acts during prime-time shows. • A hypothesis is an objective extension of the question that was originally poses. • A good hypothesis poses a question in a testable form. • Good questions lead to good hypotheses which in turn lead to good studies.

13. Step 4: Collecting relevant information • Hypotheses should posit a clear relationship between different factors, i.e. as a correlation between television viewing and aggressive behavior in boys. (that is the purpose of a hypothesis). • Once a hypothesis is formulated, the next step is the collection of information or empirical data that will confirm or refute the hypothesis. • Collecting data: • Eg. i) collect the number of violent acts occurring in 1-hour after the prime-time television show. ii) Collect the would be number of aggressive behaviors observed in children who watched the program and the number of such acts in children who did not watch the program. (Hypothesis is for you to set out to test them, NOT to prove them) As a researcher/scientist you should be intent on collecting data that reveal as much of the truth about the world as possible and letting the “chips fall where they may” whether you agree or disagree with the outcomes. (Sometimes biases occurred). - NOT HAVING A HYPOTHESIS means you have to have additional questions to ask or that those always another question to ask on the same topic, one that shed a bit more light.

14. Step 5: testing the Hypothesis • After collecting your datayou found: eg. 4.8 aggressive acts in the 1-hour period following exposure while 2.4 acts on boys who watched a nonaggressive program, what will your conclusion be? • You can say the boys who watched the aggressive programs were more than twice as aggressive as those who did not watch such programs. • OR, you migh argue that the diffrence between the two averages is not large enough for you to reach any conclusion. You may say that to be able to state that watching the aggressvie television segment reallymade a difference, you would have to see a much bigger difference. An unsolvable dillemma? NOT at all.. • Say hello to INFERENTIAL STATISTICS – a set of tools that allows researchers to separate the effects of an isolated factor (eg viewing aggressive or nonaggressive tv shows) from diffrences between groups that migh be owing to some other factor or to nothing other than chance. • These tools helps you separate the effects of the factors being studied from other, unrelated factors. What these statistical tools do is really due to what you think it is or is due to something else which you will have to leave for the next study.

15. Step 6: Working with the hypotheses • Once you have collected the required data and tested the hypotheses, you can sit down and examine the results. • The results may confirm or refute the hypothesis. • If the data confirm your hypothesis, then, the importance of the factors that were hypothesized to be realted and conceptuallyimportant were borne out and you can go on your merry way, while the next scientific experiment is being planned. • IF THE HYPOTHESIS IS NOT CONFIRMED, it may very well be a time for learning something that was not known previously! • From the example used earlier, it may mean that watching television segments with aggressive models is not the sole cause of aggressive behavior on the part of the boys. • Although, the researcher may be a bit disappointed that the initial hunch (formerly called as a hypothesis) was not supported, the results of a well-run study always provide valuable information, regardless of the outcome.

16. A Theory – is a set of statements that predict things that will occur in the future and explain things that have occurred in the past. • Step 7: Reconsidering the Theory • Finally, it is time to take stock and relate all the research • efforts to what guides your work in the first place: THEORY. • A theory can be modified according to the results of research based on the same assumptions on which the theory is based. • Eg. A particular approach to understanding the development of children and adults is known as social learning theory, which plays special importance on the role of modeling and vicarious, or indirect learning. According to this theory, watching aggressive behavior will lead/motivate aggressive behavior once the environment contains the same kinds of cues and motivation. • IF, the hypothesis is confirmed, then, another building block, or piece of evidence has been added to the house called social learning theory. (scientist always interested to fit the new brick (new information) fits were, or if it fits at all. -- THIS NEW KNOWLEDGE may change or modify the way the theory appears and what it has to say about human behavior. • AND NEW QUESTIONS MAY BE GENERATED FROM THE THEORY WHICH WILL FURTHER CONTRIBUTE TO THE WAY IN WHICH THE HOUSE/THEORY IS STRUCTURED.

17. Step 8: Asking New Questions • In any case, the last step in this simple model of scientific inquiry is TO ASK A NEW QUESTION. • Eg. “Do males react differently than females to aggressive models?” Or you may refine the original question to – “How much exposure to aggressive models is is necessary before children begin modeling the behavior?” • Whether or not the hypothesis is supported, good research leaves you farther along the trail to answering the original question. • AND .. you might be at a different place than you thought (intended) to be. THE END…….

18. TYPES OF RESEARCH The types of research methods differ primarily on 3 dimensions: the nature of the question asked the method used to answer it the degree of precision of the method brings to answering the questions

19. The Different Types Of Research • (One way in which these methods do not necessarily differ, hoevever, is in the content or for example, the focus of children, your research can be divided into 2 general categories of research methods which are: • Non-experimental – if you survey the children watching habits OR • Experimental – if you expose the children to certain models and look at the effect of the exposure on their behavior.