RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Dr. M. Durairaj Assistant Professor Dept. of Comp. Sci. & Engg., BDU

HOW TO DO RESEARCH
Research is all about addressing an issue or asking and answering a question or solving a problem, so Identify an issue, question, or problem. Talk with people who want or need your study. Find out what's already known about it. Talk with experts and/or read their reviews and the original research on the topic. Plan, cost, and do your study accordingly. Write it up and submit it for assessment. Submit it for publication. Undergrad projects are sometimes good enough to publish. Your work will benefit more people if you publish it. Rule No. 1 in academia is publish or perish.

WHAT ARE YOU RESEARCHING?

Finding a good question/problem to address can be hard. It helps to have a good supervisor, good colleagues, and/or knowledge or practical experience of and affinity for a topic. You must read journal articles to find out what's already known. Authors also often point out topics for future research.

CREATING NEW OR REVIEWING PUBLISHED INFO?

create review
Most research projects are so-called original investigations. You obtain new data or information about a phenomenon. You reach a conclusion and try to publish it. Some research projects are reviews of the literature. You use other researchers' published data or info about a phenomenon. A quantitative statistical review is called a metaanalysis. write-up of an original investigation always has to include a short review of literature.

CASE OR SAMPLE?
Are you solving a single case of something, or is it a sample that will allow you to generalize to a population? In a case study You are interested in "what happened or will happen here". Your finding applies only locally: to the case you studied. Qualitative methods are often required. You reach an answer by applying logic (= common sense?) and skepticism to your knowledge and to the information you gather. Be wary of conventional wisdom and your own prejudices. It may be possible to estimate probabilities of benefit or truth of various answers.

TYPES OF RESEARCH

TYPES OF RESEARCH
Classified into explanatory research, conclusive research, modelling research and algorithmic research..
1.

Exploratory Research An initial research which analyzes the data and explores the possibility of obtaining as many relationships as possible between variables without knowing their end-applications. Different types of ER are: Literature survey Collection of literatures in the selected area of research. Experience survey Survey of experiences of experts/ specialists in a particular field. Study of insight stimulating examples This is special kind of study oriented to have insight into research topics.

2. Conclusive Research
Lays the foundation for the formulation of hypothesis. Tests the hypothesis of a research problem formulated by exploratory research and draws definite conclusions for implementation. Classified into two types: Descriptive research Carried out with specific objective(s) and hence it results in definite conclusions. Experimental research Used to study the effect of a set of factors on the response variable of a system study. It is conducted in a controlled environment, analyzing using ANOVA.

3. Modelling Research Model is an abstraction of reality. Many of the real-life problems can be formulated as models. Types: Symbolic model Representation of the performance measure of the system of interest in terms of its variables. Example regression equation. Mathematical model These are mainly operations research moidels which aimed to solve complex real-life problems arising in the direction and management of large systems of men, machine etc./ Simulation model It is an experiment conducted oven a real-life stochastic system in a scaled frame to extract as many average operational statistics as possible to formulate respective decision guidelines at all the levels of management in industry.

4. Algorithmic Research
It is a well-defined sequence of steps to solve a problem of interest in industry, business and government.

RESEARCH PROCESS
Sequence of steps: Problem definition Objectives of the research Research questions Purpose ? Place ? Present state ? Means ? Hypotheses A hypothesis is formulated for a situation where the inference is not explicit. The correct fact can be ascertained only after collecting and analyzing the related data. Boundary of the study Boundary of the study should be properly defined.

Research design Selection of research approach Design of sampling plan Design of experiment Design of questionnaire Data collection Data analysis Interpretation of results Validation of results

LITERATURE COLLECTION & WEB BROWSING

How ? Where ? Why ?

OUTLINE OF WRITING THESIS

WHAT IS A THESIS ?

A thesis for the Ph.D. / M.Phil must form a distinctive contribution to the knowledge of the subject and afford evidence of originality shown by the discovery of new facts and/or by the exercise of independent critical power

HOW DO I GET STARTED ?

PLANNING A THESIS

HOW TO WRITE THESIS

This is about how to turn your research (once it's done) into a readable multi-chapter document. You need to figure out what to include, how to organize it, and how to present it.

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
Don't expect your advisor to be your co-author. It's your M.Phil.: you are sole author this time and the responsibility is on your shoulders. If your prose is thoughtless, misspelled or ungrammatical, oblivious or rude to related research, you're the one who looks bad. You can do it! Your advisor and committee are basically on your side -- they're probably willing to make suggestions about content and style -- but they are not obligated to fix problems for you. --They may send your dissertation back and tell you to fix it.

KEEP YOUR FOCUS

Keep your focus. Length is not a virtue unless the content is actually interesting. You do have as much space as you need, but the reader doesn't have unlimited time and neither do you. Use space as needed for clarity and to flesh out and support your story. If you feel like your thesis is too short, it may need more ideas or thoughtful discussion or experiments (talk to your advisor), but it doesn't need more padding.

GET TO THE GOOD STUFF

A newspaper, like a dissertation, is a hefty chunk of reading. So it puts the most important news on page one, and leads each article with the most important part. Get to the interesting ideas as soon as possible. A good strategy is to make Chapter 1 an overview of your main arguments and findings. Refer the reader to specific sections in later chapters for the pesky details.

Chapter 1 traditionally ends with a "road map" to the rest of the thesis, which rapidly summarizes what the remaining chapters or sections will contain. The same strategy works within a chapter. Start by telling your readers what the chapter is about and why they should read it. Then unfold your ideas and results. The order of your presentation should be natural and logical (e.g., motivation before experimental design before results).

LITERATURE REVIEW
In this section you should list how many of each kind of publication you summarized, and how you found them. What is a literature review? A literature review is not an annotated bibliography in which you summarize briefly each article that you have reviewed. It goes well beyond merely summarizing professional literature. It focuses on a specific topic of interest to you and includes a critical analysis of the relationship among different works, and relating this research to your work. It may be written as a stand-alone paper or to provide a theoretical framework (e.g. thesis). Each chapter might have its own related work section or sections, covering work that connects to yours in different ways.

WRITING REVIEW AND MANUSCRIPT PUBLICATION

Identify the broad problem area, but avoid global statements Indicate why the topic being reviewed is important Distinguish between research finding and other sources of information Indicate why certain studies are important Discuss other literature reviews on your topic Refer the reader to other reviews on issues that you will not be discussing in details Justify comments such as, "no studies were found." Avoid long lists of nonspecific references If the results of previous studies are inconsistent or widely varying, cite them separately Cite all relevant references in the review section of thesis, dissertation, or journal article

FOOTNOTES, REFERENCES .. ETC

Section: If a section or subsection is longer, consider whether you could break it down further. Subsectioning Split your section into subsections with meaningful titles. Lists If you're writing a paragraph and feel like you're listing anything (e.g., advantages or disadvantages of some approach), use an explicit bulleted list. Labeled paragraphs Label a series of paragraphs within the section, as a kind of lightweight subsectioning. Dataset. Footnotes Move inessential points to footnotes. If they're too long for that, you could move them into appendices or chapters near the end of the thesis.

Captions Move some discussion of figures and tables into their captions. Theorems Even simple formal results can be stated as a theorem or lemma. Breaking down equations
Long blocks of equations are even more intimidating than long swaths of text. You can break those apart, too:

SUMMARY

SUGGESTIONS