Research is a tool for progress. It satisfies the curiosity of humans to a lot of questions. In academics, every student has to undertake a research project. It can be in the form of writing an essay, an assignment, or a dissertation. In order to conduct effective research on any research topic, it is important that you know the steps of the research process. Knowing the steps is necessary because, without those, you cannot collect the right research material and reach a solid conclusion.
With your presence here, it is not difficult to guess that you do not know about those important steps. Well, there is no need to worry. In today’s article, we are going to discuss all the steps that are involved in a successful research process. Hence, let’s get started with the topic.
Top 7 Important Steps Of The Research Process
Conducting research on any topic is a very challenging task. It requires you to have extraordinary research skills and know-how of the important steps. So, do you know the important steps involved in the research process? No! Thus, a brief description of the top 7 important steps is as follows:
Identify The Problem
The first step in the process is to identify the problem or issue that you want to research. A well-identified problem is important in this process because it is going to guide you about the steps coming next. The problem identification will help you in setting the research objectives and choosing the right technique to study it. The approaches that you can use to identify a problem are going through the literature published and class lecture notes.
Evaluate The Literature
Once you have identified the research problem, the next step is to review the literature related to that problem. It means you should search for the identified problem on the internet and collect published information about that topic. When collecting this information, make sure that it is coming from credible and authentic research sources. To review the literature, some credible sources are ResearchGate, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar.
Setting Research Questions And Hypothesis
After evaluating the literature present on the identified problem, you should make a formal statement of the problem. Such a statement of the problem is known as the hypothesis. The research hypothesis then leads to research questions. Craft research questions that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Developing questions that cannot be answered with the current methodological approaches is not a good approach at all.
Choosing The Research Design
The next important step in the research process is to choose the research design. Research design is the framework using which you are going to answer the research questions and achieve the research objectives. In simple words, you can say that a research design is the master plan of your research. It specifies the methods for collecting and analysing the collected research data. The choice of a particular research design depends on research objectives, the nature of the problem, and the resources available.
Deciding On The Research Population
Research projects usually involve groups of people. Such groups are known as the research population. After deciding on the research design, now you should decide on the research population. It means you should define whom you want to include in your research study and whom you do not want. It is the research objectives and aims that govern this decision. So, looking at them, decide what kind of population your study requires.
Start The Data Collection
The 6th step in the research process is the step of data collection. As you have already selected a research design and decided on the research population, the only step now remaining is the step of data collection. Use the selected method and collect the data from the research participants. For example, you have chosen an interview as your data collection method. So, interview the members of the population and collect their responses. However, if you do not know how to do an interview, ask for some tips from research proposal help UK.
Process And Analyse The Data
The last step of the research process is the step of processing and analysing of the collected data. This step generally begins with the coding of the data and correcting it for errors and omissions. Also, it is impractical to put raw data in the report. So, edit the data first, then code it, and then analyse it using the methods selected in step 4. It is important to note that you should analyse the data using the right method.
Final Thoughts
To sum up, the research process involves several steps. The knowledge of these steps makes this process easy for all the researchers. All the steps that are discussed above depend on each other. Therefore, you should keep the order of the steps the same.
