Research Day 01 :Writing research plan, Types of research

I. Writing a research plan needs to answer the following.

1. What do you intend to do?
2. Why is the work important?
3. What has already been done?
4. How are you going to do the work?

A Research design is concerned with turning a research question into a testing project. The research design has been considered a "blueprint" for research, dealing with at least four problems: what questions to study, what data are relevant, what data to collect, and how to analyze the results.

Research method: determine a way of doing a systematic investigation to establish facts. It needs to include step-by-step to achieve the goal.

II. Types of Research
1.Quantitative research

• Used to test objective theories by examining the relationship among variables
• Used to quantify the data and generalise the results from the sample to the population of interest
• Used to recommend a final course of action
• Used statistical data analysis

2. Basic research

• Used to understand and generate more knowledge, e.g.
• How to increase the productivity of the employees.
• How to increase the effectiveness of small businesses.
• How to improve the effectiveness of information systems.
• Einstein's Theory of Relativity
• Newton's Contributions

3. Applied research

• Used to find solutions to everyday problems, cure illness, and develop innovative technologies, rather than to acquire knowledge for knowledge's sake.
• Improve agricultural crop production
• Treat or cure a specific disease
• Improve the energy efficiency of homes, offices, or modes of transportation

4. Longitudinal research
5. Qualitative research

• Is primarily exploratory research
• Used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations.
• Provides insights into the problem or helps to develop ideas or hypotheses for potential quantitative research.
• Used to develop an initial understanding
• Used non-statistical data analysis
• Useful for finding detailed information about people's perceptions and attitudes

6. Descriptive research

• Often used to determine characteristics of the target market
• Answers questions like, "who, what, where, when, and how often" questions
• Fact finding investigation

7. Classification research
8. Exploratory research

• Used when the problem is not well-defined
• Used to determine the best research design, data collection method and selection of subjects.
• Used to provide significaion insight into a given situation
• It is not typically generalizable to the population at large
• It relies on secondary research such as reviewing available literature and/or data, or qualitative approaches such as informal discussions with consumers, employees.
• Answers question like: "Why are ticket sales down?"

9. Causal research

• Explores the relationship between two variables
• Answers questions like: "Does increased advertising result in more ticket sales?"

II. Qualitative data vs quantitative data

1. Qualitative data is information about qualities; information that can't be measured, e.g. gender,  softness of skin, softness of a cat, color of the sky, color of your eyes, agree-to-disagree something/opinion/statement

2. Quantitative data: height, weight, blood pressure, shoe size, the length of the fingernails.