Many students find the initial research for a dissertation to get more daunting than any other part of the work. In this article, we are going to review the ultimate guidelines for making sure that you get your research on point.
There are many reasons why students dread conducting primary research, and these may vary from disjointed statistics, insufficient skills, or lack of knowledge in the field.
The necessary steps to take get discussed below:
- Select a data type
It is the first step that students get required to take. There are three types of data that they can choose from, and they include primary data, secondary data, or big data. Since this article mainly focuses on initial research, we will focus on the first data.
Primary data is a collection of information that has been looked through by the researcher as a single person. Most undergraduate and graduate projects require this type of data. It gets collected at the time the student is doing their research, and the data is in full control of the researcher.
Secondary data get searched by someone else, and people can find this on government archives, past researchers, and online platforms that offer cheap dissertation writing services. It is easy to unearth since you will not need to do the collection of data by yourself. You should get more careful with this type of data since its accuracy is always in question.
Big Data is complex and does not get used at either graduate or undergraduate levels. It is high in volume, has a wide variety of information, and has a high velocity of processing. People need intense training to get their hands on big data.
- Choose your method of research.
When faced with a research project, you can choose between using the qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-method.
Qualitative research gets typically applied in the absence of quantitative investigations on the subject of study. It gets utilized when you are working on the topic for the first time. It gets applied when the student is eyeing on meanings of reality as one of the methods used is interviews, and one can easily understand someone else’s perception of what it entails.
Quantitative research aims at confirming or canceling a laid up hypotheses through utilizing statistics. One usually focuses on the numerical data that entails a reality that is either fixed or measurable. The use of large samples and variable tools generalizes the outcomes to the public.
Mixed research is a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods of study. The main aim of using this type of research methodology is to have a deeper understanding of the topic or subject that would prove hard if one applied just one method. The way to go about this is to do qualitative research and then supplement it with a quantitative methodology.
- Understand the strengths and limitations
Qualitative research’s main strength is that the participant gets to explore a subject in great detail. You get to understand occurrences, thoughts, traits, and meanings in their specifications.
Qualitative research provides far much better and detailed information than you can find in a quantitative study.
A limitation of this is that you cannot extrapolate your findings to the public because you only get to take information on a selected cluster group to help you steer your research.