Key Points
- Research is discovering something new about the natural world, the built world, or society.
- Research may also include the development of new methods, systems or models.
- Research has a general structure: posing questions, gather- ing evidence, making claims, discussing claims.
- Discourse in research can be divided into description, re- view and argumentation.
- Types of research include (1) designed experiments; (2) systematic observations; (3) review and synthesis; (4) system design; (5) social sciences.
General structure of research
The term research is from the French rechercher, “to look for (again)”, and so by extension “to investigate”, “to [attempt to] find out”. This general term implies that to do research is to discover something that was previously completely or partially unknown or not understood.
The “something new” that is discovered by research may be:
- new facts about the natural world, the built (engineered) world or human society;
- new understanding of the processes in these;
- new or improved methods to investigate the above;
- new or improved systems;
- new or improved models; or
- a new synthesis (conceptual framework) of existing facts.
General or Abstract Structure of Thesis Research
- raising (or, posing) questions;
- providing evidence to answer these questions; this requires some appropriate methods to gather the evidence;
- making claims: a statement of what has been achieved, based on this evidence;
- a discussion of the reliability and relevance of the claims.
Questions ⇒ Evidence ⇒ Claims ⇒ Context
Research stages
- A reconnaissance stage of unstructured observation;
- A reflective stage, during which hypotheses are generated;
- A testing stage, where experiments or structured observations are designed to verify these hypotheses.
Reconnaissance ⇒ Reflection ⇒ Testing ⇒ Conclusions
Types of research
- Designed experiments, e.g. laboratory or field research where the researcher imposes the treatments in a (semi-)controlled situation and measures the system response.
- Systematic observations, e.g. resource survey or community meetings, where the researcher makes measurements or observations according to a plan but without complete control of the process.
- Data mining, where the researcher looks for unexpected patterns in large datasets.
- Synthesis, where the researcher imposes a new conceptual framework on previous data and establishes that this is a better or more unifying explanation.
- System design, where the researcher designs a system (database, visualization, modelling ...) and shows that it is somehow “better” than previous designs; this includes design of algorithms and methods.
- Modelling, where the researcher builds a conceptual or (more commonly) computational model of a process; the model is evaluated by its success in reproducing the behaviour of the natural or social system.
- Comparative studies, where the researcher compares existing situations in order to determine the reasons for the observed differences. The researcher must argue that all relevant factors have been considered; thus only close analogues should be used.
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